"The whole world talked about it," she went on dreamily. "We had a real prince for the best man, and two of the ushers couldn't speak a word of English. Don't you remember that the police closed the streets in the neighbourhood of the church and wouldn't let people spoil everything by going about their business as they were in the habit of doing? Some of the shops sold window space to sight-seers, just as they do at a coronation." "I daresay all this should let in light, but it doesn't." "Don't you read the newspapers?" she cried impatiently. She actually resented my ignorance. "Religiously," I said, stung to revolt. "But I make it a point never to read the criminal news." "Criminal news?" she gasped, a spot of red leaping to her cheek. "What do you mean?" "It is merely my way of saying that I put marriages of that character in the category of crime." "Oh!" she cried, staring at me with unbelieving eyes. "Every time a sweet, lovely American girl is delivered into the hands of a foreign bounder who happens to possess a title that needs fixing, I call the transaction a crime that puts white slavery in a class with the most trifling misdemeanours. You did not love this pusillanimous Count, nor did he care a hang for you. You were too young in the ways of the world to have any feeling for him, and he was too old to have any for you. The whole hateful business therefore resolved itself into a case of give and take--and he took everything. He took you and your father's millions and now you are both back where you began. Some one deliberately committed a crime, and as it wasn't you or the Count, who levied his legitimate toll,--it must have been the person who planned the conspiracy. I take it, of course, that the whole affair was arranged behind your back, so to speak. To make it a perfectly fashionable and up-to-date delivery it would have been entirely out of place to consult the unsophisticated girl who was thrown in to make the title good. You were not sold to this bounder. It was the other way round. By the gods, madam, he was actually paid to take you!" Her face was quite pale. Her eyes did not leave mine during the long and crazy diatribe,--of which I was already beginning to feel heartily ashamed,--and there was a dark, ominous fire in them that should have warned me. She arose from her chair. It seemed to me she was taller than before. "If nothing else came to me out of this transaction," she said levelly, "at least a certain amount of dignity was acquired. Pray remember that I am no longer the unsophisticated girl you so graciously describe. I am a woman, Mr. Smart."