I am sure you will have such a good time.  What a man!  As natural as nature!  I see, by the insular paper that your islanders adore him.

     “Hope you found your father better.  Another wonderful man!  Such an
     original type, too!  Good-bye, my dearest dear_, ALMA.

     “P.S.  Have missed you so much, darling!  Castle Raa wasn’t the same
     place without you—­I assure you it wasn’t.”

While I was turning this letter over in my hand, wondering what the beautiful fiend had meant by it, my maid, who was standing by, was visibly burning with a desire to know its contents and give me the benefit of her own interpretation.

I told her in general what Alma had said and she burst into little screams of indignation.

“Well, the huzzy!  The wicked huzzy!  That’s all she is, my lady, begging your pardon, and there’s no other name for her.  Arranged a month ago, indeed!  It was never thought of until last night after Mr. Conrad’s telegram came.”

“Then what does it mean?”

“I can tell your ladyship what it means, if you’ll promise not to fly out at me again.  It means that Madame wants to stand in your shoes, and wouldn’t mind going through the divorce court to do so.  And seeing that you can’t be tempted to divorce your husband because you are a Catholic, she thinks your husband, who isn’t, might be tempted to divorce you.  So she’s setting a trap for you, and she expects you to fall into it while she’s away, and if you do. . . .”

“Impossible!”

“Oh, trust me, your ladyship.  I haven’t been keeping my ears closed while your ladyship has been away, and if that chatterbox of a maid of hers hadn’t been such a fool I suppose she would have been left behind to watch.  But there’s somebody else in the house who thinks she has a grievance against you, and if listening at keyholes will do anything . . .  Hush!”

Price stopped suddenly with her finger to her lip, and then going on tiptoe to the door she opened it with a jerk, when the little housekeeper was to be seen rising to an upright position while pretending that she had slipped.

“I only came to ask if her ladyship had lunched?” she said.

I answered that I had not, and then told her (so as to give her no further excuse for hanging about me) that in future she was to take her orders from Price—­an announcement which caused my maid to stand several inches taller in her shoes, and sent the housekeeper hopping downstairs with her beak in the air like an injured cockatoo.

All the afternoon I was in a state of the utmost agitation, sometimes wondering what Martin would think of the bad manners of my husband, who after inviting him had gone away just as he was about to arrive; sometimes asking myself, with a quiver of shame, if he would imagine that this was a scheme of my own contriving; but oftenest remembering my resolution of renunciation and thinking of the much fiercer fight that was before me now that I had to receive and part with him alone.