"Where are you going?" she asked.
Margaret put her hand away with simple dignity, and, looking at her, replied:
"To save my husband!"
Mr. Austin Ambrose left the boudoir a happier man than he had ever been before during the whole course of his life.
There is a keener joy in the anticipation of success and victory which the actual success and victory themselves cannot produce. In his mind's eye he saw himself—as he had pictured to Violet—lying at her feet in some sunny, vine-clad villa in Spain. Those two by themselves, with no one to share or dispute his claim to her! With Blair either dead of Prince Rivani's rapier thrust, or away in England with Margaret! Yes, success had come to him at last. Not only would he have won the woman he loved with a passion which he had nourished and fostered and secretly fed during all those long and bitter months, but he would have secured wealth as well, for he had not managed Blair's estate for Blair's benefit alone, but had contrived to feather his own nest pretty considerably; besides, Violet still held her own money, and it would now become his!
He was so filled with the ecstasy of anticipation that he could have stopped on the great staircase, and raised the house with his exultant laughter, had there not been still something to do before he could admit that all was ready.
Always looking forward to this supreme moment, he had arranged with one of the drivers of the pair-horse carriages to expect a summons from him, and, slipping on a cloak, he went out to the corner of the street and gave the man his instructions. He was to wait at the corner of the cathedral until he, Austin Ambrose, arrived with a lady. The man was then to drive to the station as if for his life, and regardless of anything. Then he returned to the palace, and hastily packed a small portmanteau. He had scarcely finished it when Blair's valet knocked at the door, with General Trelani's card.
Austin Ambrose slipped on a dressing gown over the traveling suit, for which he had exchanged his other clothes, and received the general with calm serenity and dignity.