Bayard Lorraine did speak to Mrs. Howard the next day, telling her of his love for Fair, and asking her to give him her beautiful daughter.

And, as Fair had expected, the gentle lady replied to his suit by telling him that her own daughter was dead, and that pretty Fair was only her adopted child.

“I will be frank with you, Bayard. She is a penniless orphan, and when I adopted her her mother had just died, and the poor girl was in destitute circumstances and very unhappy. She had been reared in poverty, and belonged to the great army of sewing girls in New York. But she is as good and pure as she is lovely, and if you really love her I do not think that these facts will make any difference with you,” she added.

But he could not help feeling a little disappointed. His face grew grave, and for a moment he could not speak.

Mrs. Howard regarded him in silence for a moment, then said, in a slight tone of scorn:

“If you are regretting Fair’s lack of fortune, Bayard, I am very sorry, but I can do nothing for her. My own fortune, all of which I received from my husband, reverts, at my death, by a clause in his will, to a distant relative.”

He was so moved that he did not take any interest in that unknown relative, but answered, with a flash of wounded pride:

“I am sorry you think me mean enough to care for mere money. I assure you, I care nothing for that, although I will own that I was a little disappointed. I have some pride of birth, and I was glad that my intended bride was of a lineage as good as my own. It was a disappointment to know that she was from an obscure family, that is all, but I shall love and cherish my beautiful bride just the same as if she were a princess. As for money—pshaw! I have more than enough, and my pen has proved a new source of revenue to me.”

She held out her hand to him impulsively.

“I am glad you take it so well, so nobly,” she said. “Of course it was a disappointment, but, then, the world is full of disappointments,” she sighed, as she thought of Azalia lying in her far-off grave across the sea. Then she added pleadingly: “You will not let Fairfax know how cruelly you were disappointed? Poor child, she is so loving, so sensitive, and she is so frightened already—I have seen it in her face—lest you should be angry.”

“Angry? No, no! Even if I had known this from the first, it would have made no difference,” Bayard Lorraine answered, and when he went back to Fair he smiled, and said:

“All is well, my darling! She has given her consent to our marriage.”

She clung to him with trembling hands.

“She has told you——”

“Everything about the romance of your life—yes, dear.” He kissed the quivering rosebud lips that began to frame the words:

“I—want—to tell—you all—about—it, Bayard. Indeed—I was—was not—so much to blame—after all—and—and——”

“Not another word, now, my own love,” he said fondly. “No one blames you for anything.”

He thought she referred to the deception that had been practiced in letting him believe that she was Mrs. Howard’s own daughter so long. True to his implied promise to Mrs. Howard, he would not let the girl know that he was disappointed.

He took the beautiful, pale face in his hands and kissed the quivering rosebud lips.

“Do you think I blame you for being poor, instead of Mrs. Howard’s heiress?” he said reproachfully. “Nonsense, little darling! I love you for yourself alone.”

“Oh, Bayard, you are so good to me!” she said gratefully, and she wondered how she was going to make her confession to him, since he forbade her to speak of the past.

“But, Bayard,” she began, twisting her white fingers nervously around each other, and growing paler with every syllable, “I—should like—I mean, I think I had better—tell you all about my past life.”

“Mrs. Howard has told me all about that, dear little one; there is no need for you to go over it again,” he said tenderly, adding: “Wait until some other time, and I will listen.”

And, with a sigh of relief, she accepted the respite, and gladly put off her confession until some other time, giving herself up unrestrainedly to the enjoyment of the present.

“I will not think about the past, nor the future. I will be happy in the present, for I have never had any happiness till now,” she thought, with a mist in her tender eyes at thought of the weary, toilsome years of her girlhood, and her mother’s ambition, that had caused such bitter, tragic results.

Bayard Lorraine declared very soon that the excitement of his love affair and his absorption in his beautiful betrothed quite prevented him from going on with his literary work. He could not stay away from the Florentine villa—he could not keep out of the presence of Fair long enough to begin a single chapter of the new novel for which his publisher was impatiently waiting. Even if he could have stayed away from her, she would have been constantly in his thoughts. He was in love in the most genuine and romantic fashion, and his love absorbed his whole soul.

Augustus Frayne came back from his yachting expedition, and found things just as he had expected when he gave up the field in despair and went away. His merry sisters chaffed him in secret; his father and mother silently sympathized with him, for they had coveted charming Fair for a daughter-in-law, and were disappointed when Bayard Lorraine won the lovely prize. But Augustus bore it like a hero, wished the prospective bride much joy, and congratulated the lucky suitor. Then he began a furious flirtation with a lovely Italian girl at the next villa, walking over there every day, and spending long hours in her company, thus leaving a fair field for Fair’s lover.

Those weeks at the prince’s villa, how fast they flew on Cupid’s wings! How rapturously the long, bright days passed by to the lovers, who seemed to think that the world held no one but themselves, although one of the Frayne girls said jestingly:

“I think you were very rash, Fair, in engaging yourself to the author. You should have waited until the prince returned from America. You might have won him with those bright eyes of yours, and that would have been a catch! He’s immensely wealthy, they say, and Gussie’s Italian sweetheart told him that there was not a handsomer man in the world. She said all the Italian girls were crazy over him. My! I wish I could get acquainted with him! Wouldn’t I set my cap!”

Fair only smiled. What was the prince to her? Her lover was more to her than a king.

And she was more to him than a queen. He worshiped her beauty, her sweetness, her gentleness. He believed that she was angelically innocent and good, and, although he knew so little of her parents, he felt sure that they must have been superior people, else they could not have given to the world a daughter so pure and lovely.

Mrs. Howard was not surprised when he began to plead for an early marriage.

“I can never settle down to my literary work until I am married; and, besides, I am anxious to call Fair my own.” He laughed, and then added: “What if this prince, who is soon to return, they say, should win her from me?”

“You need not be afraid of any man. Fair is devoted to you,” said Mrs. Howard.

“I am sure of that. I was only jesting about the prince,” said Bayard Lorraine. “But won’t you agree with me that an early marriage would be expedient?”

She was glad that he thought so. His desire coincided with hers, for she was anxious to see her beloved Fair settled for life.

“For it seems terrible to think of leaving her alone in the world, poor and unprotected, as she was when Heaven sent her to me,” she said anxiously.

So, with Fair’s consent, it was arranged that the marriage should take place a few weeks prior to their leaving the villa. The wedded pair would take a little tour of Paris while Mrs. Howard remained at the villa. Then they would come back, and the three would go home together to New York.

“Am I dreaming, or will all this happiness be really mine?” Fair asked herself, in fear and trembling, for now the weight of her secret began to weigh on her spirit.

She had never yet dared to make her confession to Bayard Lorraine. Shrinking coward that she was, she could not.