The princess left the room with her friends and a quantity of French dressing on her back. The diplomat looked at me and smiled and said:
“The princess is in hard luck, and I can't help speaking of it. If a meteor should fall into Italy it would land on the princess. Her husband gets drunk now and then and beats her up. I believe that he has worn out several canes on her person. I saw her once when she had been beaten black and blue. She decided then to leave him.”
“But didn't?” I asked.
“No; her husband made love to her again, and she couldn't resist him. He's a great love-maker. Two or three times she has been on the point of going back to her people, but hasn't. Poor thing! She's too proud to go home and acknowledge the truth—that she has been a fool and her husband a brute.”
I was now pretty well prepared for my next talk with Mrs. Norris.
We left the dining-room, and I took Mrs. Fraley to a seat in the corridor and told her of the knight-like temperament of the young Count Carola, and of his high rank as a discoverer of wealth and beauty.
She showed no surprise, but said: “We had heard that he was engaged to Miss Norris, but the count says that the report is untrue. He has not really asked my niece to marry him yet, but he calls her the most beautiful woman he ever saw. Do you blame him?”
“Not a bit, although your niece is the second girl to whom he has awarded the first premium within three days. There may be others, but that is going some.”
All this had no effect on the armor-clad, brain-proof lady to whom it was addressed.
“It's his natural chivalry,” she said, as I rose to go.