“The Comtesse Hermenstein is not in Paris.”

“No!” and the Princesse laughed mischievously, “She is in Rome!  She must have arrived there this morning.  Au revoir, Marquis!” Another dazzling smile, and she was gone.

Fontenelle stood staring after her in amazement.  Sylvie was in Rome then?  And he had just refused to accompany the Princesse D’Agramont thither!  A sudden access of irritation came over him, and he paced the room angrily.  Should he also go to Rome?  Never!  It would seem too close a pursuit of a woman who had by her actions distinctly shown that she wished to avoid him.  Now he would prove to her that he also had a will of his own.  He would leave Paris;—­he would go—­ yes, he would go to Africa!  Everybody went to Africa.  It was becoming a fashionable pasture-land for disappointed lives.  He would lose himself in the desert,—­and then—­then Sylvie would be sorry when she did not know where he was or what he was doing!  But also,—­ he in his turn would not know where Sylvie was, or what she was doing!  This was annoying.  It was certain that she would not remain in Rome a day longer than she chose to,—­well!—­then where would she go?  In Africa he would find some difficulty in tracing her movements.  On second thoughts he resolved that he would lose himself in another fashion—­and would go to Rome to do it!

“She shall not know I am there!” he said to himself, with a kind of triumph in his own decision, “I shall amuse myself—­I shall see her--but she shall not see me.”

Satisfied with this as yet vague plan of entertainment, he began at once making his arrangements for departure;—­meanwhile, the Princesse D’Agramont riding gracefully through the Bois on her beautiful Arab, was amusing herself with her thoughts, and weighing the pros and Cons of the different lives of her friends, without giving the slightest consideration to her own.  Here was a strange nature,—­as a girl she had been intensely loving, generous and warm-hearted, and she had adored her husband with exceptional faith and devotion.  But the handsome Prince’s amours were legion, though he had been fairly successful in concealing them from his wife, till the unlucky day when she had found him making desperate love to a common servant,—­and after that her confidence, naturally, was at an end.  One discovery led to another,—­and the husband around whom she had woven her life’s romance, sank degraded in her sight, never to rise again.  She was of far too dignified and proud a nature to allow her sense of outrage and wrong to be made public, and though she never again lived with D’Agramont as his wife, she carried herself through all her duties as mistress of the household and hostess of his guests, with a brave bright gaiety, which deceived even the closest observer,—­and the gossips of Paris used to declare that she did not know the extent of her husband’s follies.  But she did know,- -and while filled with utter disgust and loathing for