“With pleasure,” said Hugh, understanding that the little princess had some secret to tell her friend, and that he was not wanted for the next quarter-of-an-hour. “A spoilt beauty,” he thought, as he strolled along the lobbies. “I should like to know how any physician can cure _that_, unless he inoculates her with the smallpox!” He had hardly left the box before the princess’ manner changed. She clasped her friend’s hand, and with her lovely face all quivering, the corners of her lips drooping, and her great eyes full of tears, she almost sobbed: “Oh, mammy, mammy! It is true!—it is _true_!” “My dear, what is true? You have been thinking such strange things!” said Lady Forwood, distressed and worried, for she loved the unhappy little creature. “You have got some silly notions into your head, and you imagine all sorts of nonsense.” “Listen!” said Mercedes, glancing round and speaking low. “To-day he told me that he and the count would go on the river. I had to go to the Court alone. Well, I thought I would ask the ambassadress to take me—it would be not so long—she has the entrée, as you call it. She did take me. Coming back, my carriage got into a number of other carriages, and I saw—_him_.” “The prince? Well, why not?” asked Lady Forwood. “I saw _him_—and _her_—the woman whose portrait I found!” said Mercedes, in a tone of anguish. “Well, my dear,”—Lady Forwood spoke in a matter-of-fact manner, although she was anathematising the prince for his flagrant conduct in being publicly seen with the beautiful French actress whose name had been coupled with his in society gossip—“I daresay he will be able to explain it all to you, if, indeed, you were not mistaken.” “How—_explain_?” asked Mercedes, bitterly. “How explain a _lie_, mammy?” “Hush!” said Lady Forwood, uneasily. “My dear, I never should have worried David if I had seen him with fifty women!” “That—is different!” said the princess. “Mammy, you love each other!” Lady Forwood began a brisk lecture: “My child, you are not fit to be out in the world at all,” she said. “You ought to have come to me for a year’s instruction before you were married, instead of going straight to the altar from the convent. You know absolutely nothing about men. Men’s ways are not women’s ways. The world allows them their liberty; and if their wives don’t allow it them also, they will neglect their wives for the world, and the wives will be to blame.” And she held forth on this somewhat loose doctrine so subtly that the princess’ expression gradually changed from grieved perplexity to a sort of placid resignation. “A man is not _bad_ who allows a lady acquaintance to take him some distance in her carriage,” went on Lady Forwood, didactically. “You will be wiser by-and-by, darling. You will take it for granted that men are better than they seem.” “The _count_ is good,” said Mercedes, sorrowfully. “He is so kind to me!”