Marianne's youthful coachman had left the French embassy on the same night as Jolival and with the same extravagant precautions. Jolival had explained to him as concisely as possible how the Ethiopian Caleb had become transformed into Turhan Bey, and with amazing self-control, Gracchus had refrained from asking any questions or showing the smallest astonishment. Nor, bored though he might have been since his arrival at the palace at Bebek, would he have quitted the door he had been told to guard against the machinations of Mr. Canning for anything in the world.

Gracchus had never cared much for the English. As a good child of the revolution, he hated anything to do with the dreaded "Pitt and Coburg" of his boyhood. He had never approved of his mistress's acquaintance with that same Pitt's niece, but Mr. Canning he had regarded as a creature of the devil and his servants as so many demons. The news that they had dared to threaten his dear princess had sent him nearly frantic. As a result, he was guarding the graceful doors of painted cedarwood entrusted to him like a janissary defending the sultan's treasury. It was all he could do to refrain from subjecting the prince and Jolival to a thorough search every evening, such was his fear that Canningue might have disguised himself as one or other of them the better to reach his victim.

Donna Lavinia, in turn, would lead the two men to the tandour and then she, too, would withdraw to resume her needlework and her vigil, ready to answer her young mistress's call. Her presence, indeed, was among the very few that Marianne could endure, even in her tormented state, and she would often beg her to sit with her. For the silent Lavinia knew better than anyone how to be quiet.

The reunion between the two women had taken place without an unnecessary word. They had embraced like mother and daughter after a long absence, and then Donna Lavinia had resumed her services to the younger woman as though she had never left off. Since then she had surrounded her with every care called for by her condition, but she had never made the slightest allusion to the expected child, nor had she betrayed any of the ill-timed jubilation that anyone else could not have failed to betray. She knew too well what the longed-for heir was costing the young Princess Sant'Anna.

And so she was the only person Marianne would have near her. She bathed her and helped her to dress, did her hair and brought her meals, and slept at night in an adjoining chamber with the door left open, ready to answer the least call.

Sunk in her mental apathy, Marianne was aware of this unspoken solicitude. She allowed herself to be nursed like a child but, as her time drew nearer, she would call for Lavinia more and more often, as though she felt the need to reassure herself that when the time came she would be there to help her through the ordeal.

As for the prince, his visits invariably followed the same pattern. He would come in, inquire after her health and try gently to rouse her from her melancholy with news of the outside world and the day's gossip from the Ottoman capital. From time to time he would bring her a present of a new book, a few flowers, a jewel or some unusual or amusing trinket. The one thing he never brought was scent for which, from the sixth month, Marianne had developed an aversion. Even Jolival would change his clothes completely on emerging from his bouts of smoking in the library so as not to offend her with the smell of Turkish tobacco on his person.

At the end of a quarter of an hour Corrado would rise and bow and bid her good night, leaving Jolival to keep her company. Donna Lavinia would hold back the velvet curtains and his tall, graceful figure would vanish through them to be seen no more until the following night.

"He reminds me of Aladdin's genie," Marianne confided to Jolival one day when she was feeling a little more cheerful than usual. "I always feel that I have only to rub one of the lamps and he will appear before me in a pillar of smoke."

"I shouldn't be surprised. The prince is undoubtedly a most remarkable man," was all the vicomte said. " And I don't mean in his appearance only. He's a person of very high intelligence and a most cultivated, even artistic turn of mind…" But his panegyric had ended there, for Marianne had turned her head away and relapsed again into her depression. And the good Jolival could not help privately wishing Jason Beaufort to the devil. Just then he would have given a lot to be able to root him out of the girl's sick mind.

Her longing for the handsome privateer was killing her slowly and Jolival, helpless in the face of that speechless misery, could do nothing to comfort her. Where were those happy days when Marianne, superficially in love with Napoleon, had committed every kind of folly but without ever, as now, tearing herself to pieces on the thorns in her path?

He dared not question her about her feelings for Corrado. For himself, the deeper he penetrated, not without difficulty, into the prince's strange, secret, self-contained personality, so well protected as to be almost impenetrable, the more Jolival liked him. He found himself deeply sorry for the malign trick of fate which had laid on an innocent and altogether exceptional being an antisocial mask that made him an outcast among his own kind.

If the truth were told, Marianne could not have explained her own feelings toward the man whose name she bore. He fascinated and irritated her at the same time, like a too-perfect work of art, while the instinctive liking she had felt for the slave Caleb had undergone some modification when applied to the Prince Sant'Anna.

Not that she had ceased to pity him as the victim of an unjust fate, but her compassion had been somewhat superseded by her pity for herself. She might even have taken pleasure in the company of a man of his quality if he had not been the one who was making her go through her present ordeal. For as the days went by, she began to blame him for her sickness, her lassitude and the temporary eclipse of her beauty.

"I look like a starving cat that's swallowed a balloon," she wailed, catching sight of herself in the mirror. "I'm ugly—ugly enough to put off any man, however besotted!"

On this particular evening she was looking even worse than usual. The high cheekbones stood out starkly in her face, betraying her listless wretchedness all too clearly. Her long hands were hardly less pale than the full gown of white wool which enveloped her from neck to ankle, so that Jolival found himself wondering how she would survive her approaching ordeal.

Donna Lavinia said that she was eating almost nothing and that little out of duty more than actual hunger. Her hearty appetite was a thing of the past and for three months now Marianne had had no need to worry about her figure once the child was born. She would be downright thin—always supposing she came safely through the confinement itself.

The ritual quarter of an hour reached its end and the prince rose to take his leave. He was bowing ceremoniously over Marianne's hand, as he did every night, when Donna Lavinia hurried in and murmured something in his ear. He stiffened and frowned.

"Where are they?" he asked.

"At the main entrance."

"I will go at once."

The prince's habitual calm had gone. Contrary to his usual custom, he hurried from the room with barely a word of excuse. Jolival watched him go with an uneasy expression and even Marianne was roused to curiosity by such unaccustomed behavior.

"Is it some bad news?" she asked.

Lavinia hesitated. She might have said that the news had been for Corrado's ear alone, but she was incapable of resisting her young mistress's soft voice and melancholy look. So she merely replied as evasively as she could: "Yes and no. There has been an attempt to steal one of the ships in the harbor, but the thief has been caught and brought here."

"To steal one of the ships?" Marianne repeated vaguely. "Do you know which one?"

Before Donna Lavinia could answer, the heavy velvet curtain covering the entrance to the tandour was put aside by the prince's own hand. His blue eyes scanned each of the faces raised to his in turn and came to rest on Marianne. He was evidently under the stress of some strong emotion.

"Madame," he said, using very nearly the same words as Donna Lavinia a moment earlier, "there has been an attempt to steal your ship. My people seized the thief and have brought him here, with three or four of the men he employed to assist him. Do you want to see him?"

"To see him? Why should I? Why don't you see him yourself?" she said in sudden alarm.

"I have no wish to see him. I merely caught a glimpse of him in the hands of my men. And I still think it is for you and no one else to interview him. My presence would only complicate matters and I would rather leave you. He will be here at any moment."

Then Marianne knew why it was that her heart had beat faster and why she was suddenly nervous. She knew now who the thief was. And she felt magically alive again. The will to live revived in her wasted body. She was herself again and no longer simply the receptacle for an alien existence that was consuming her.

And yet there was a flaw in the happiness that flooded her being. The man she was about to see had been taken in the act of trying to take possession of the brig. What if he had succeeded? He was unlikely to have left her anchored secretly in some quiet bay while he returned to Constantinople in search of the woman waiting for him there. It was not easy to hide a vessel of that size. He would undoubtedly have taken to the open sea to escape pursuit and Marianne was afraid of finding out that, to a seaman, his ship could mean more than the woman he loved. It was this fear which made her strive to stifle the small voice within that threatened to spoil her wonderful moment.