And yet that his confession had so injured him was fully apparent.
There, still at his brooding, the returning Columbine discovered
him a half-hour later.
"All alone, my prince!" was her laughing greeting, which suddenly
threw light upon his mental darkness. Climene had been disappointed
of hopes that the wild imagination of these players had suddenly
erected upon the incident of his meeting with Aline. Poor child!
He smiled whimsically at Columbine.
"I am likely to be so for some little time," said he, "until it
becomes a commonplace that I am not, after all, a prince.
"Not a prince? Oh, but a duke, then - at least a marquis."
"Not even a chevalier, unless it be of the order of fortune. I
am just Scaramouche. My castles are all in Spain."
Disappointment clouded the lively, good-natured face.
"And I had imagined you... "
"I know," he interrupted. "That is the mischief." He might have
gauged the extent of that mischief by Climene's conduct that evening
towards the gentlemen of fashion who clustered now in the green-room
between the acts to pay their homage to the incomparable amoureuse.
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