"Ah! I saw a change in that minute, when he looked up and perceived me. Ah! he turned green, just as I had seen him in my dream—d'un ton verdâtre—and his expression, it was terrible! That was the beginning of all my trouble, which lasted nearly five years, before I consented to divorce him. He went to live in Paris, and, having no Italian property, became a French subject. This enabled me to do so. Have I not reason, ma chere, to believe in spiritual warnings, second sight, and—and so on?"
Of course every one declared that it was the most interesting and remarkable instance of spiritual premonition that he or she had ever heard, direct from the fountain-head. Only Mr. Sims made a captious remark, to the effect that the vision seemed to have been quite useless—it had resulted in the princess being very seasick, and very unhappy some time before she need have been; otherwise, the warning had produced no effect, one way or the other.
Grace listened to all this in silence. It was amazing to her that any one could bring herself to relate deliberately so painful an episode in her past, to hand it over, as it were, for analysis to a cold and curious circle, eager, indeed, for "some new thing," but not even pretending to feel any warm sympathy for the lady's domestic woes. It confirmed Grace in the opinion that those woes could not be very deep-seated. No doubt this soft feather-bed of a woman had suffered to some extent, but not to the extent which she herself believed—not as a proud, passionate, sensitive nature would have suffered in like circumstances. To such a one it would have been impossible to make them the subject of after-dinner discussion, in a circle of the merest acquaintance.
She was at some distance from the princess, and Madame Siebel, who sat near her, whispered,
"You can take a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink. He was dead sick of his wife five years ago, so she would have done better to set him free then."
"In England we don't think that sort of millstone should be so easily slipped off the neck," returned Grace, half seriously and half playfully. "She has only just divorced him, then?"
"Only just. He is waiting now, I believe, for Madame Moretto to divorce her husband in order to marry her."
"Good gracious! Has she got a husband also? And what is the plea in her case?—or is it the husband who divorces her!"
"No. He is passive, I am told, in the matter. She pleads desertion, though of course that is all nonsense, for she is ever so rich, and left him years ago. The curious thing is, no one knew she had a husband until the prince was free to marry her. Then it came out she had been clandestinely married to some American, who had separated from her, when he discovered the sort of woman she was."
"Well! I must say these divorces by mutual consent seem very easily obtained in your country."