Those weeks at the prince’s villa, how fast they flew on Cupid’s wings! How rapturously the long, bright days passed by to the lovers, who seemed to think that the world held no one but themselves, although one of the Frayne girls said jestingly: “I think you were very rash, Fair, in engaging yourself to the author. You should have waited until the prince returned from America. You might have won him with those bright eyes of yours, and that would have been a catch! He’s immensely wealthy, they say, and Gussie’s Italian sweetheart told him that there was not a handsomer man in the world. She said all the Italian girls were crazy over him. My! I wish I could get acquainted with him! Wouldn’t I set my cap!” Fair only smiled. What was the prince to her? Her lover was more to her than a king. And she was more to him than a queen. He worshiped her beauty, her sweetness, her gentleness. He believed that she was angelically innocent and good, and, although he knew so little of her parents, he felt sure that they must have been superior people, else they could not have given to the world a daughter so pure and lovely. Mrs. Howard was not surprised when he began to plead for an early marriage. “I can never settle down to my literary work until I am married; and, besides, I am anxious to call Fair my own.” He laughed, and then added: “What if this prince, who is soon to return, they say, should win her from me?” “You need not be afraid of any man. Fair is devoted to you,” said Mrs. Howard. “I am sure of that. I was only jesting about the prince,” said Bayard Lorraine. “But won’t you agree with me that an early marriage would be expedient?” She was glad that he thought so. His desire coincided with hers, for she was anxious to see her beloved Fair settled for life. “For it seems terrible to think of leaving her alone in the world, poor and unprotected, as she was when Heaven sent her to me,” she said anxiously. So, with Fair’s consent, it was arranged that the marriage should take place a few weeks prior to their leaving the villa. The wedded pair would take a little tour of Paris while Mrs. Howard remained at the villa. Then they would come back, and the three would go home together to New York. “Am I dreaming, or will all this happiness be really mine?” Fair asked herself, in fear and trembling, for now the weight of her secret began to weigh on her spirit. She had never yet dared to make her confession to Bayard Lorraine. Shrinking coward that she was, she could not. CHAPTER XXIII. THE PRINCE ARRIVES. Mrs. Howard lost no time in sending her orders to Paris for an elaborate trousseau for her adopted daughter. When she had got this important affair off her mind, she turned her attention to the wedding festivities. She declared that Fair should have a grand wedding. The affair should be worthy of, and even a credit to, the prince’s villa.