“Oh, she is perfectly beautiful!” cried Beatrix enthusiastically. “Her eyes are so big and so starry bright, her hair like sunshine, and her face makes one think of a beautiful flower. Indeed, she is the loveliest girl I ever saw.”
Prince Gonzaga looked a little startled.
“The Fairfax I knew was just like that,” he said. “She was a New York girl, beautiful but poor, and of obscure origin.”
“This girl is from New York, too, but she is a great heiress, and has had many admirers. Lord Leigh and Augustus Frayne both wanted to marry her,” said the Italian beauty.
“Heiresses are always sought after,” commented the prince, and he added, with a touch of bitterness: “There is not much genuine love in the world, Miss Consani. Every one wants to marry money.”
“Or beauty,” said Miss Consani. “Beauties, even though poor, can generally make good matches. How was it with your New York beauty? Did she marry rich?”
“She wished to do so. She was mercenary, like most women, but she had a bitter lesson,” answered the prince, and by the moody way in which he drew his dark brows together she guessed that he had had some unusual interest in her of whom he spoke. Her dark eyes began to sparkle with interest, and she exclaimed:
“Please tell me all about it. I’m sure it’s interesting.”
“Perhaps,” said the prince, and his dark eyes seemed to flash beneath their jetty brows. Pulling nervously with his slim, dark hand at his black mustache, he continued:
“She was poor and ambitious, as I said just now, and her mind was made up to sell her beauty for a rich husband; but a poor fool fell in love with her, and when she refused to have anything to say to him, he pretended to be rich and of good birth. The beauty snapped at the glittering bait, and married him, expecting to go at once to a magnificent palace on Fifth Avenue. The young husband was fool enough to think she loved him a little and would forgive him when she found out he was poor. But, alas, for his hopes! The very hour of her marriage she left him forever, giving way to undisguised scorn at his poverty, and vowing she would never live with him.”