“Of course not!” she agreed languidly; “It certainly clears up the mystery of The Islands, which you were so anxious to visit;--and I suppose the next thing you will do is to marry him again to some daughter of a Royal house?” “Most assuredly!” “As _you_ were married to _me?_” she said, raising her eyes to his face with that strange deep look which spoke eloquently of some mystery hidden in her soul. His cheeks burned with an involuntary flush. He bowed. “Precisely! As I married you!” he replied. “The experiment was hardly successful!” she said with her little cold smile. “I fear you have often regretted it!” He looked at her, studying her beauty intently,--and the remembrance of another face, far less fair of feature, but warm and impassioned by the lovely light of sympathy and tenderness, came between his eyes and hers, like a heavenly vision. “Had you loved me,” he said slowly, “I might never have known what it was to need love!” A slight tremor ran through her veins. There was a strange tone in his voice,--a soft cadence to which she was unaccustomed,--something that suggested a new emotion in his life, and a deeper experience. “I never loved anyone in my life!” she answered calmly--“And now the days are past for loving. Humphry, however, has made up for my lack of the tender passion!” She turned away indifferently, and appeared to dismiss the matter altogether from her mind. The first time she saw her son, however, after hearing of his marriage, she looked at him curiously. “And so your wife is very lovely, Humphry!” she said with a slightly derisive smile. He was not startled by the suddenness of her observation nor put out by it. “She is the loveliest woman I have ever seen,--not excepting yourself,” he replied. “It is a very foolish affair!” she continued composedly; “But fortunately in our line of life such things are easily arranged;--and your future will not be spoiled by it. I am glad you are going abroad, as you will very soon forget!”