“We have been anticipating your visit, Prince,” Mr. Sabin remarked, with grim courtesy. “Can we offer you coffee or a liqueur?”
“I thank you, no,” the Prince answered. “I seldom take anything before lunch. Let me beg that you do not disturb yourselves. With your permission I will take this easy-chair. So! That is excellent. We can now talk undisturbed.”
Mr. Sabin bowed.
“You will find me,” he said, “an excellent listener.”
The Prince smiled in an amiable manner. His eyes were fixed upon Lucille, who had drawn her chair a little away from the table. What other woman in the world who had passed her first youth could sit thus in the slanting sunlight and remain beautiful?
“I will ask you to believe,” the Prince said slowly, “how sincerely I regret this unavoidable interference in a domestic happiness so touching. Nevertheless, I have come for the Countess. It is necessary that she returns to Dorset House this morning.”
“You will oblige me,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “by remembering that my wife is the Duchesse de Souspennier, and by so addressing her.”
The Prince spread out his hands—a deprecating gesture.
“Alas!” he said, “for the present it is not possible. Until the little affair upon which we are now engaged is finally disposed of it is necessary that Lucille should be known by the title which she bears in her own right, or by the name of her late husband, Mr. James B. Peterson.”
“That little affair,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “is, I presume, the matter which you have come to explain to me.”