The Count de Brensault had seldom been in a worse temper.

That Jeanne should have flouted him was not in itself so terrible, because he had quite made up his mind that sooner or later he would take a coward's revenge for the slights he had been made to endure at her hands.

But that he should have been flouted in the presence of a whole roomful of people, that he should have been deliberately left for another man, was a different matter altogether.

His first impulse when Jeanne left him, was to walk out of the house and have nothing more to say to the Princess or Jeanne herself.

The world was full of girls perfectly willing to tumble into his arms, and mothers only too anxious to push them there.