“I should have no right to interfere between man and wife.” “But you would take the right--you would defend me?” breathlessly. “No!” Mrs. Howard answered icily, and that refusal seemed to open the floodgates of despair upon the wretched girl. She fell back into her seat, crying out that the blackest hour of a wretched life had come. Mrs. Howard looked on, perplexed, appalled. What was to be the end of all this? She had not anticipated rebellion on the part of Fair against her husband, and she could not understand it, save on the score of what she had asserted just now--her love for Bayard Lorraine. “She must forget it. There is nothing in it now but dishonor for all concerned, and unless she returns to her husband there will be some new tragedy enacted,” she thought, in terror; so she determined to take Prince Gonzaga’s part against his willful wife. “Your husband is desperate, Fair. Unless you yield him perfect obedience hereafter, you will never have any more peace or security,” she said, taking advantage of a momentary silence on the girl’s part to speak. Fair did not answer for several minutes. Her face was buried in her hands, and she remained perfectly silent for an interval, after which she lifted up her head, and said sadly: “I yield! Tell Prince Gonzaga that I will grant him an interview here one hour from now.” CHAPTER XXVII. IN MAD FLIGHT. Mrs. Howard went away, relieved, yet contemptuous. “It was an easy victory, after all,” she told Prince Gonzaga. “She made a show of resistance that seemed genuine at first, but at the last I saw plainly that it was all for effect. She will receive you in one hour in her room.” His brilliant black eyes flashed with triumph. “I told you so!” he said coolly, and she could not help sighing at this confirmation of the mercenary spirit of the girl she had loved so dearly and believed so good and true. The prince was jubilant. He thanked her eloquently for espousing his cause, and expressed a hope that the old friendship between herself and his wife might always continue. But Mrs. Howard was one of those truly good women who are unconsciously hard toward the erring, and call that hardness by the name of justice. Fair’s deceit had so outraged her that she felt no wish to be her friend any more. So she shook her head, and replied frankly: “I am not as noble in mind as you seem to be, Prince Gonzaga. I cannot forgive your wife for the way she tricked and deceived me into being her friend. When I leave your villa, which I will do as soon as Bayard Lorraine is able to be moved, my acquaintance with Princess Gonzaga will be forever at an end.” He bowed, and expressed some polite regret, but in his heart he was not sorry. “She will be more easily won when she realizes that she has not a friend left but me,” he thought, in triumph, and gave himself up to unrestrained joy at the victory he had won over the girl whom he loved in spite of his belief that she was mercenary and heartless.