She closed her eyes a moment, sighing. Florence Marsh watched her with amazement. The independent Anglo-Saxon could never understand the hypnotic terror that Navagero threw over his sister. The thoughts of the Marquise had wandered back to Cannes. She saw the little chapel of Notre Dame des Pins, where every day for months a mass had been said in order to find pardon for her falsehoods, and she saw the altar where she and Corancez had knelt and made a vow that they would go together to Loretto as soon as their marriage was announced. The Provençal believed in the Madonna, just as he believed in the lines of the hand, with that demi-scepticism and demi-faith possible only to those southern natures, so childish and so cunning, so complex with their instinctive simplicity, so sincere in their boastfulness, and forever superstitious in even their coldest calculations. He saw in the scruples of Madame Bonnacorsi the surest guarantee of his success; for, once in love, a woman of such religious ardor and such passionate intensity would end necessarily in marriage. And, besides, the tapers burning in the little church at Cannes assured him in regard to the brother, whose suspicions he had evaded, but whom he knew to be capable of anything in order not to lose the fortune of his sister. So, unlike Miss Marsh, he was not astonished at the fears of his _fiancée_. But what could the fury of Alvise avail against a union consummated in due form before a genuine priest, lacking only the civil consecration, which mattered nothing to the pious Marquise? However, faithful to the old adage that two precautions are better than one, Corancez, in view of the eventual explanation, was not displeased at the prospect of having at his wedding a man of his own set. Why had he not thought before of his old friend of Louis-le-Grand, whom he had found again at Cannes, just as candid and simple-hearted as in the days when they sat side by side on the benches of the school? Corancez had recognized the candor and simplicity of his old acquaintance at the first touch of his hand. He had recognized them also in the innocent impulsiveness with which Hautefeuille had become enamoured of the Baroness Ely de Carlsberg. He had revealed this passion to his two interlocutors; but he had not told them that he believed Madame de Carlsberg to be as much in love with the young man as he was with her. However, he might justly have boasted of his perspicacity. It had been keen in this case, as in so many others. But, perspicacious as he was, the Southerner did not realize that in making use of his discovery he was about to turn the _opéra bouffe_ of his marriage with Madame Bonnacorsi into a dramatic episode. In speaking to himself of his famous line of luck, he always said, "Only gay things come to me." It seems, in fact, that there are two distinct types of men, and their eternal coexistence proves the legitimacy of the two standpoints taken