"Yes, darling," said the elder Miss Carleton, taking the sobbing girl in her arms, "it is quite true. Listen, and you shall hear the facts. I can tell them in a very few words. You were a mere girl of seventeen at a boarding school in America when you first met this man. He was one of the masters, and was known as 'The Prince,' because he claimed to be a son of Napoleon the Third, and, in fact, I believe there was truth in his claim. But he fell desperately in love with you, and you, an innocent girl, with no thought of husband or love-making, laughed at him. All this you will remember yourself. What you will not remember is that the man, who has strange occult powers, hypnotised or mesmerised you one day, and when you were in that state, and did not know what you were doing, compelled you to go through the form of marriage with him. I was staying in the neighbourhood of the school at the time, so as to be near you, your dear mother being recently dead; and hearing that you had been seen going out with 'The Prince'--no one knew why--I found out in what direction you and he had gone, and followed, for I disliked and distrusted him from the first. But I was too late. The ceremony was over. You were--and, I fear, are--the man's wife. Even if we had gone to law, to attempt to upset the marriage, we might not have won, for hypnotic influence is hard to prove in the unsympathetic atmosphere of the law courts, and, even if we had won, the scandal and shock might have killed you, for you were already worn to a shadow by fretting for your mother. I shrank from the thought of such a scandal, as I knew you would have shrunk; and, rightly or wrongly, I did what seemed best to me under the circumstances. I am not long in making up my mind, and, my mind once made up, I do not hesitate to act.