Florence stood perfectly still for a moment, then turned away.
"I beg your pardon," said the countess, "but a sudden fainting spell seized me. My heart is a bit weak."
"Don't mention it," replied the gallant Norton. He was as innocent as a babe as to what had really taken place.
Florence went back home. She wrote a brief note to Norton and inclosed the ring which she had secretly worn attached to a little chain around her neck.
When Norton came the next day she refused to see him. It was all over. She never wished to see him again.
"He says there has been some cruel mistake," said Jones.
"I saw him with the countess in his arms. I do not see any cruel mistake in that. I saw him. Tell him so. And add that I never wish to see him again."
Then she ran swiftly to her room, where she broke down and cried bitterly and would not be comforted by Susan.
"In heaven's name, what has happened?" demanded the frantic lover, "what has happened?"
The comedy of the whole affair lay in the fact that neither of the two suspected the countess, who consoled them both.
So far as Jones was concerned, he was rather pleased with the turn of affairs. This was no time for love-making; no time for silly, innocuous quarrels and bickerings, in which love must indulge or die. Florence no longer rode horseback, and Norton returned to his accustomed haunts, where no one made the slightest attempt upon his life. In his present state of mind he would have welcomed it.
"What's the matter with Jim?" asked the night city editor, raising his eye shade.
"I don't know," answered the copy reader.
"Goes around as if he'd been eating dope; bumped into the boss a while ago and never stopped to apologize."
"Perhaps he's mapping out the front page for that Hargreave stuff," laughed the copy reader. "Between you and me and the gate post, I don't believe there ever was a man by the name of Hargreave."
"Oh, there was a chap by that name, all right. He's dead. A man can't swim three hundred miles in rough water, life-buoy or no. They ought to have funeral services, and let it go at that."
"But what was the reason for that fake cable from Gibraltar saying that Orts was alive? I don't see any sense in that."
"The man who pulled it off did. I think, for my part, that both Orts and Hargreave are dead, and that the man picked up by the tramp steamer _Orient_ was riding some other balloon."