“Now, shall we ride back again?” suggested the prince. “It is the worst of pleasant things that they must end, but, on the other hand, it is the best of unpleasant things, and so we come to an average good.” They rode back rapidly. Once more the prince, who, as he told them of his new Order, seemed every inch a prince, was once more “Cousin Hal,” the merry, boyish comrade of the day. They reached home in good time, but the prince bade them farewell at the door. “I can’t possibly come in, thank you, Mrs. Cortlandt. I assure you it would be a great pleasure to me, but I fear I am already late to an engagement to lunch. Good-bye, my dear little cousins. Some day you will visit me in England. It is not good-bye for always, you know!” He stood bareheaded under the porte-cochère and took both hands of each of the Cortlandts and Beth in a hearty farewell clasp. He held Beth’s hands for a moment longer than the others. Then he stooped and kissed her cool cheek. “Good-bye, dear little Beth,” he said. “You are a sweet, old-fashioned little girl and I hope you will be a happy woman, as I know you will be a good and charming one.” Then he sprang upon his beautiful horse and was gone. Beth walked into the house in a dazed way, turning the ring upon her finger. “He was a king’s son,” she said. “If it weren’t for this ring I could not believe it had all happened! He is the best, the splendidest, and he is gone! Oh, why do people have to come, like falling stars, right out of nothing and then go away into it?” Tears stood in her eyes. Aunt Alida kissed them away. “It was a beautiful little adventure, dearest,” she said. “Natalie has told me of the Order of the Strong Hearted. The prince has done a really lovely thing in establishing it. You cannot know now how far-reaching it may be in its consequences on your life and character. I am profoundly grateful to him, and I think he is, in the highest sense, a nobleman.” Three days later the paper announced that the prince had sailed. But he had left behind him rings upon four growing hands and a deep impression, a noble ideal, in four impressionable, unfolding hearts. CHAPTER XVIII “FLORIDA PASQUA” Eastertide brought with it weather that might have been called unseasonable warmth but that almost any sort of weather is seasonable in the spring of the Eastern states.