Up to this point, chiefly by the assiduous efforts of Baroness Radnika, the fiction that Félicia was merely taking a short cruise, and that her husband had not found time to join her, had been kept up. Even the Pannonian Court had been willing to account for anything that seemed strange in the arrangement by remembering Félicia’s American education, but she had no mind to leave things in this state. When the Grand-Duke and Duchess paid her a hurried visit on board the yacht on their way to Drinitza, she told them the facts of the case with the greatest frankness, and refused to hear of a reconciliation. A separation she wanted, and a separation she would have, and the Grand-Duke saw no way of avoiding a scandal. He took counsel with Cyril and Mr Hicks (these conversations it was which aroused the Grand-Duchess’s ire), and they beat their brains for some means of bringing Félicia back to Bellaviste. King Michael was far from implacable. He admired Félicia intensely, and was really as much in love with her as it was possible to him to be, and he had the grace to be heartily ashamed of his own part in the dispute. He saw it now through Félicia’s eyes, and admired her secretly for resenting his conduct, and he was also painfully alive to the ridicule that would descend upon him if it came out that he had driven away his three months’ bride by his groundless jealousy. He was willing to make promises and concessions for the future, but Félicia opposed a simple negative to all his proposals. Once more Cyril became the natural go-between, and travelled first to Bellaviste to interview the King, and then across the peninsula to Paranati to try to influence Félicia, but all in vain.