He had come back to her because he needed her--because they could not survive apart. To realise that was to forget all else--the danger once implied in her father’s half-veiled threats; Fanchette’s assurances that a certain one must sooner or later come to be convinced, and resigned to the thought, of his own impotence; the terror she herself had had that she had been cast off by him because she had been found wanting in the crucial test. If that had been so, his masculine resolution had been no proof against his need of her; and in proportion as he needed her his weakness was a thing for transport. It is characteristic of the needs of lovers that they appear insensible to the fear of, or the reasonable consideration for, any obligations whatsoever outside their own. Very dimly the thought of her engagement shadowed Isabella’s mind; it seemed like an illusion that change of circumstance had already half dissipated; she had a vague feeling that, were reference to the fact to be craftily avoided, the fact itself would gradually be overlooked and forgotten. She was like a punished child, dismissed back to her play, bearing, with the infinite pathos of childhood, no grudge against her unjust judges, happy only to be forgiven and thought no more about, while she revelled in the sunshine from which she had been so long debarred. She was happy--happy; laughter frolic’d in her eyes; a bird sang in her breast. She did not know how her crown of bliss was to realise itself; only somehow he would find a way; she was to see him, hear him, be loved by him once more. All night her heart went dancing; it danced on to the joy of the morning, and awoke as if to a sense of wild reprieve. She kept her secret to herself--the secret of her knowledge of his return--but its fumes were in her brain, and she could not altogether hide the exhilaration they caused there. Fanchette, attending to her Highness’s toilette, was in a curiously silent mood--morose even, and uncommunicative. Her mistress sought, by every merry art, to coax the girl into a response to her own bright spirits. She laughed at and rallied her, she overflowed with kindness, she would not be denied for all the icy rebuffs she encountered. But without much avail, it seemed. In truth the camériste, perplexed and a little conscience-haunted, was in the last temper for welcoming such approaches. She could have wished rather for affront, impatience, inconsiderateness--anything that would have appeared to justify her in offence, to provoke her to retaliation. But this unassailable sweetness was so disarming that for the moment it confounded her. In the afternoon she accompanied her mistress to Colorno; and, there in the carriage, urgency at last lent her desperation. She stiffened herself, and spoke: “You are glad to be returning, mademoiselle?” “O, how glad, Fanchette!”