"Well, after all," observed Harding, who was not insensible himself to Sara's delightfulness, "the British public is absurdly fond of a love-match. They adore a sentimental Prime Minister. They want to see him either marrying for love, or jilted in his youth for a richer man. These things enlist the popular sympathy. What made Henry Fox? His elopement with Lady Caroline Lennox." "To be sure," said Reckage--"to be sure. That's a point." "It is a compliment to the sex," continued Harding, "when a great man is taken captive by a pretty face. Men, too, rally round a Lochinvar. Such an evidence of heart--or folly, if you prefer to call it so--is also an evidence of disinterestedness. So, on the whole, I cannot follow your objections to the new Mrs. Orange." "You have been away so long," said Garrow fussily, "that you have forgotten our prejudices. Orange himself, to begin with, has something mysterious in his origin. They say he is French--related to the old French aristocracy; but the less one says in England about foreign pedigrees the better. All that of itself is against him, and Mrs. Orange, it seems, is more or less French, or Austrian, too. We can't help regarding them as foreigners, and I always distrust foreigners in politics. Why should they care for England? I ask myself." "Why, indeed?" said Harding, with irony. "Have I made myself clearer?" asked Garrow. "I can afford to speak. My own wife was a Russian. But I was not in political life, and she was an Ambassador's daughter." "You think you would feel more sure of Orange's patriotic instinct if he had chosen an Englishwoman?" said Reckage. "I am bound to say that he would have shown discretion in settling down with one of our simple-hearted Saxon girls." "And who was Mrs. Orange before she married Orange?" asked Harding. "A widow--a Mrs. Parflete," said Garrow. "Parflete!" exclaimed Harding. "Mrs. Parflete! But I have met her. She married Wrexham Parflete, an extraordinary creature. He lived for years with the Archduke Charles of Alberia. People used to say that Mrs. Parflete was the Archduke's daughter. I ran across Parflete the other day in Sicily." "But he is dead," said Pensée, much agitated; "he drowned himself." "I cannot help that," repeated Sir Piers. "I met him last week, and he beat me at écarté." "Then it is not the same man," said Reckage, "quite obviously." "Wrexham Parflete had a wife; I heard her sing at a dinner-party in Madrid. She was living with the Countess Des Escas; there was a row and a duel on her account. I never forget names or faces." "But this looks serious," said Reckage. "Do you quite understand? It's the sort of thing one hardly dares to think. That is to say if you mean what I mean. The marriage can't be legal." The two women turned pale and looked away from each other. "I mean as much or as little as you like," said Harding. "But Parflete was alive last Monday."