A good deal had happened to the California sisters, and as the "two Pols" will come into Adelle's life later on, their story can be briefly given here. Irene, the sister who had brutally betrayed Adelle in a spirit of careless mischief, had attracted with her ripe California charm a young Englishman of family. Mr. Hermann Paul, the "San Francisco railroad man" referred to by Miss Comstock, meantime had died, and Irene had gone home to join her mother and younger brothers and ultimately was married to her Englishman. She divided her time thereafter about equally between England and the new earthly paradise of the Pacific. Her sister Sadie had determined to remain in Europe, under other chaperonage than Pussy Comstock. It was rumored that a young Hungarian nobleman was hanging somewhere in the horizon, but for the present she played about with Adelle and Archie. Apparently Sadie Paul did not share her sister's prejudices about "the red-headed bounder," for she flirted unconcernedly with Archie as far as he would go, which to do Archie justice was not dangerously far. Adelle, good-natured and easy-going by disposition, welcomed the return of her old school friend and was not in the least disturbed by her flirtatious attempts with Archie. That sort of amorous pretense was more or less the habit of the world she had known, and besides, she was aware that Sadie was "having a desperate affair" with Count Zornec, the Hungarian referred to above, who was temporarily exiled to his remote estate. Indeed, she became the means of furthering this passion and speeding it to its destined end in matrimony, which has to do with a subsequent part of our tale....