The lawn was deserted now, and Marguerite looked down upon the terrace where she had stood a few moments ago trying in vain to win back a man's love, which once had been so wholly hers.
It was strange that through all her troubles, all her anxiety for Armand, she was mostly conscious at the present moment of a keen and bitter heartache.
Her very limbs seemed to ache with longing for the love of a man who had spurned her, who had resisted her tenderness, remained cold to her appeals, and had not responded to the glow of passion, which had caused her to feel and hope that those happy olden days in Paris were not all dead and forgotten.
How strange it all was! She loved him still.

And now that she looked back upon the last few months of misunderstandings and of loneliness, she realised that she had never ceased to love him; that deep down in her heart she had always vaguely felt that his foolish inanities, his empty laugh, his lazy nonchalance were nothing but a mask; that the real man, strong, passionate, wilful, was there still--the man she had loved, whose intensity had fascinated her, whose personality attracted her, since she always felt that behind his apparently slow wits there was a certain something, which he kept hidden from all the world, and most especially from her.
A woman's heart is such a complex problem--the owner thereof is often most incompetent to find the solution of this puzzle.
Did Marguerite Blakeney, "the cleverest woman in Europe," really love a fool?
Was it love that she had felt for him a year ago when she married him?
Was it love she felt for him now that she realised that he still loved her, but that he would not become her slave, her passionate, ardent lover once again?
Nay! Marguerite herself could not have told that.

Not at this moment at any rate; perhaps her pride had sealed her mind against a better understanding of her own heart.

But this she did know--that she meant to capture that obstinate heart back again.

That she would conquer once more.