Somerset had first met the Princess Rabomirski and her daughter three years before, at Spa. They were staying at the same hotel, a very modest one, which, to Somerset’s mind, ill accorded with the princess’ pretensions. Bernheim was also in attendance, but he disposed his valet, his motor car and himself in the luxurious Hôtel d’Orange, as befitted a man of his quality; also he was in attendance not on Ottilie, but on the princess, who at that time was three years younger and a trifle less painted. Now at Illerville-sur-Mer the trio were stopping at the Hôtel Splendide, a sumptuous hostelry, whose season prices were far above Somerset’s moderate means. He contented himself with the little hotel next door, and hated the Hôtel Splendide and all that it contained, save Ottilie, with all his heart. But at Spa, the princess was evidently in low water from which she did not seem to be rescued by her varying luck at the tables. Ottilie was then a child of seventeen, and Somerset was less attracted by her delicate beauty than by her extraordinary loneliness. Day after day, night after night, he would come upon her sitting solitary on one of the settees in the gaming room, like a forgotten fan or flower, or wandering wistfully from table to table, idly watching the revolving wheels. Sometimes she would pause behind her mother’s or Bernheim’s chair to watch their game; but the princess called her a little _porte-malheur_ and would drive her away. In the mornings or on other rare occasions, when the elder inseparables were not playing roulette, Ottilie hovered round them at a distance, as disregarded as a shadow that followed them in space of less dimensions, as it were, wherever they went. In the Casino rooms, if men spoke to her, she replied in shy monosyllables and shrank away. Somerset, who had made regular acquaintance with the princess at the hotel and who took a chivalrous pity on her loneliness, she admitted first to a timid friendship and then to a childlike intimacy. Her face would brighten and her heart beat a little faster when she saw his young, well-knit figure appear in the distance; for she knew he would come straight to her and take her from the hot rooms heavy with perfumes and tobacco on to the cool balcony and talk of all manner of pleasant things. And Somerset found in this neglected little sham princess what his youth was pleased to designate a flower-like soul. Those were idyllic hours. The princess, glad to get the embarrassing child out of the way, took no notice of the intimacy. Somerset fell in love.