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gave them; for the craft before her was impelled by a young man in the garb (full-rigged, and more) of a sailor,-widening trousers, a low, broad-brimmed straw hat, a wide, lowcut, anchor-embroidered collar, a gold-fringed sash of white silk,—and the passenger was a lady who lolled back under the same parasol that had illumined the quay at Lucerne, and who lazily admired the quick and supple muscularity of her ornately attired companion.

Aurelia asked the Governor at lunch if he considered the salon of their hotel at all adapted to the giving of a concert. The Governor sent out a questioning look full of startled apprehension, as if to inquire what was in the wind now. It was the look of a man who feels the ground shifting beneath his feet—of a man whose recent experiences have made it worth his while to wonder what will happen next. He had entered upon this little tour simply as a quiet scientific gentleman whose tastes were subdued and whose requirements were extremely moderate, certain that what was good enough for him was good enough for the unexacting Chatelaine, and that what would please them both would assuredly suffice for their guest. But at just the present moment his status was something of a puzzle to him. It seemed now and then as if his eyes caught distant glimpses of the flaunting of banners, as if his ears detected remotely the halfsmothered clamor of trumpets, as if his nostrils were being tickled by fumes wafted from invisible censers, and there were hours when their modest little excursion seemed to have merged into something almost equaling a progress. And one day, after an hour's quiet cogitation in a retired corner of the garden, he became satisfied as to the identity of the chief figure in this triumphant march-reaching the result by a process of elimination. In the first place, it was not he himself. True, there were moments when he felt that the cheeks of the genius of Fame showed a tendency to distend themselves unduly on his account; he was daily hearing himself addressed by new and ingenious titles supposed fittingly to recognize his eminence, and this eminence had been further confessed by unexpected attentions from various officials in the minor towns lying be tween Verona and Milan. Yet, on the other hand, he often felt himself degraded almost to the level of a lackey: it was fetch and carry, do this and do that—a long and unceasing string of minor attentions which Aurelia West expected and demanded, and in which even the Chatelaine, careless of her gray-haired guardian, completely acquiesced.

In the second place, the chief figure of the progress was not their guest from Paris. True, she was showing an increasing disposition to flaunt her magnificent apparel here, there, and

everywhere, in places high and low, in season and out, and she was developing a capacity for haughty insolence toward hotel-keepers and their dependents that almost chilled the old gentleman's blood. But, on the other side, for every inch that she exalted herself in public she would humble herself a foot in private; and when the Governor had seen her a few times running about nervously with her mouth full of pins, and had once encountered her in a dark hallway with a shoe of the Chatelaine's in one hand and a tiny blacking-brush in the other, he saw that Aurelia West was not burning to be the Princess, but only the Princess's devoted slave.

There was only one of them left the Chatelaine herself. It must be for her, then, that they had given up their quiet and pleasant inn at Verona, and had transferred themselves to another, larger, showier, more expensive. It was for her that Fin-de-Siècle was always being sent trotting about for carriages and coachmen, that Tempo-Rubato would be despatched for ciceroni and sagrestani to open up famous places at distinguishedly unusual hours, and that Aurelia West had so willingly metamorphosed herself into a lady's-maid. It was for her that the hotel-keeper at Brescia had bowed down with obsequious devotion, and that the half-dozer. eager waiters had tumbled over one another's heels; it was for her that the sindaco of Bergamo had driven up to the door of their inn with a carriage and pair; it was for her that he himself had been left to spend three dismal days m the Brera at Milan, staring at casts, coins, and madonnas, while Aurelia organized and led a triumphal tour among the shops of the Corso and the Galleria. The Governor studiously contracted his eyebrows as he stared through the white walls of Cadenabbia across the lake, and rubbed his nose thoughtfully with his long forefinger. Well, after all, the dear child was worth it.

But he might have spared himself an uneas apprehension that the indefatigable Aurelia was designing to organize an entertainment at the hotel with the Chatelaine as chief patroness. and Aurelia, too, might have spared herself an apprehension that Des Guenilles was intending to duplicate here her performance at Meran:** the Duchess had dismissed her three or fe remaining voices, and, having thus stripped her self of the last shreds of opéra comique, was dulging in a fortnight of unadulterated res preparatory to her autumnal engagements Paris itself. Meanwhile, she was established the other big hotel at the far end of the tow and was daily doing Cleopatra-on-the-Cyda as far as circumstances and surroundings re mitted-the resemblance being greatest, a course, on those occasions when Antony wz

not required to furnish the motive power as well as the devotion.

But the lake was free to all, and its shores were made accessible by frequent steamers. Aurelia twice covered the course from Como to Colico, and once she made a side-excursion down into the arm at the end of which stands Lecco; and on all these occasions she passed the panorama in review with the ferret-like, undeviating gaze of the specialist. The sheer fall of mountain-side, and the white tumbling of cascades, she viewed with complete indifference; the busy activities of quarry and silkmanufactory were so completely ignored as even to pass unresented; the fine picturesque ness of church-tower and monastery was taken in unconsciously, if at all, while the crumb ling walls of untenanted castles and fortresses seemed to strike her as anachronous to a degree: but for every distant glint struck by the sun on balustraded terrace, for every glimpse of pediment or colonnade caught through groves of cedar and magnolia, her eyes were keen indeed. In fact, Aurelia's sole concern in all this was to discover a villa ideally suitable for the enigmatic son of the Duke of Largo. Before long she did discover it, but not from the deck of the steamer.

For, on a certain afternoon, one of the insinuating boatmen of Bellagio, with more heed to profit than to meteorology, had tempted our friends out upon the water at a time when the prospect for wind and rain seemed more than commonly good. Within half an hour the prospect became a certainty, and a strong wind and a high sea drove them straight to shore. They effected their haphazard landing at a flight of broad and easy marble steps which broke through a long and stately terrace to lead down to the water between rows of sculptured vases rioting with flowers, and which led up to avenues of box and clipped ilex adorned with multifarious statues. And when a brilliant figure in white flannels came hastening down one of these stately paths to assist them in alighting, the transported Aurelia rose at once to the situation on the wings of ecstasy: here at last was indeed the villa of Tempo-Rubato, and it was the master himself who had come to welcome them. Tempo-Rubato knew nothing of this ecstasy, but he had a sharp sense of atmospheric conditions; yet with all his haste to get the Governor and his charges under shelter, he had barely done so before the storm broke.

It was sharp and sudden, short yet violent; a gusty roar, an ominous lashing of waters, a heavy downpour, a touch of thunder and lightning; then the infuriated beauty quieted her heaving bosom and veiled her flashing eyes, and bound down her flying hair and stilled her angry clamor, and presently Como, save for a

murmur reminiscent of rebellion, was herself again. Within a quarter of an hour the sky was clearly blue, and Tempo-Rubato walked forth with his guests, accompanied by his parents, who were spending a month with him in villeggiatura, and by Fin-de-Siècle, who had sprung up from somewhere or other, and who announced himself as on his way back to Paris. The broad, graveled walks trickled with their last rivulets, the polished masses of box and laurel tingled with a million raindrops, the white walls of villas and hamlets glistened on many a remote mountain-slope, and a fullarched rainbow hung out its flag of truce from shore to shore. Through this scene TempoRubato, fully en prince at last, led the way with an air of easy and gracious mastery. The Chatelaine was simply enchanted by the spectacle, and did not hesitate so to express herself. As for the splendors of the villa itself, they impressed her almost to the verge of discomfort. The pictorial stateliness of the Vintschgau had not been without its effect upon her, but the difference between that and what she had previously experienced had been only one of degree. Here, now, was a difference of kind; never before had she encountered anything so suave, so luxurious, so spaciously serene, so indolently graceful. Every glimpse of cloudwreathed mountain-peaks seen down long avenues of ilex overawed her; every glance at the blue expanse of waters caught through openings in statued and arcaded galleries acted only as a spur toward the adequate expression of her delight.

This undisguised appreciation was not at all to the taste of Aurelia West, who did not care to have the Chatelaine show herself so completely pleased, so powerfully impressed. She herself accordingly drew on a weary and halfdisdainful air, as if her own infancy and childhood had been passed in villas of uncommon splendor, and as if she had tired of all such long years ago. She entered upon a quiet little course of disparagement by means of crossreferences to other travel experiences: she drew upon the outskirts of Vienna and the environs of Paris, where, as she more than intimated, features of equal magnificence were not altogether wanting, and she reminded the prostrate Chatelaine of one or two rather fine things in the ancestral home of Zeitgeist that found no fellows here. Propped up by such aids as these, the Chatelaine was not completely bowed and broken by Tempo-Rubato's grandiose environment; but she went through an ordeal which tried to the uttermost their united fortitude when the Marchese summoned them subsequently to a grand fête, when moonlight, music, fireworks, and what not besides, combined nearly to vanquish this simple-minded

girl and even to modify the nil admirari attitude of her friend.

The Governor found himself at home among the serried nymphs and goddesses of Tempo-Rubato's freshened elysium,-personages whom the old Duke pointed out as well as he knew how, and he jotted down with some nimbleness one or two little notions that he fancied might do very nicely at Avenches. He even begged from Tempo-Rubato a slight pencil-sketch of the uncommonly effective landingstage, from which to complete his own new marmorata, and he carried away a ground-plan and a perspective view which their host cleverly slap-dashed down on a page torn from his note-book. Fin-de-Siècle, too, scratched down his own little impression on the sensitive mind of the old gentleman, when he informed him, at one stage of their progress through the grounds, that he had just despatched his last chapters to Paris. This was done in a tone most marked, one sinister and even threatening; and the Governor, whose mind sometimes moved with a bounding intuition that was little less than feminine, instantly saw himself figuring upon the pages of a book, and none too flatteringly either. He sighed and shuddered. Were all the rites of hospitality powerless to exorcise the demon of publicity? And if he himself figured among the dramatis persona, how about his associates? If he were the père noble, or ignoble, as he rather feared, how, then, as to the heroine ? an inquiry that he trembled to pursue.

But this ominous thought would now and then flap its dusky wings about his head as they loitered along through thicket and greenhouse, for Fin-de-Siècle had fixed a most intent regard upon the Chatelaine, and kept it there. Aurelia, never completely certain heretofore of exemption from a snub from this quarter, now found herself swiftly fading into nonentity. She undertook to revivify her own image in the mind of this contemptuous youth by reverting to certain episodes common to the Parisian experiences of them both; but some of these he ignored, and others he had forgotten, or had so far forgotten that it would be weariness to remember. Aurelia was willing, under certain conditions and for certain ends, to humble herself, but she was not yet quite ready to be humbled by anybody else, and she resolved to lie in wait until occasion might hold out the prospect of solace to her mortified spirit.

Such an occasion offered itself almost immediately-perhaps you will say she made it. It was in the largest of the greenhouses—the central one-that she found an opportunity at once to reassert her own importance and to exalt still higher the already exalted Chatelaine. Under a great octagonal dome of glass, focus

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of Tempo-Rubato's horticultural endeavors, was set a small, stone-encircled pond, the surface of which was half hidden by the big, flat, lustrous leaves of some rare plant which had brought all its energies to one surpassing focus of its own-a single, great, white flower of transcendent purity and splendor. Aurelia's hands at this very moment were cumbered with flowers that Tempo-Rubato had presented. to her, flowers of but moderate rank, it is true, but distinguished by the giver and his giving,-nor had the Chatelaine been altogether forgotten by the doting old Duke; but nothing like this prevented Aurelia from fixing a determined gaze on that one unique and precious blossom -a gaze that passed from Tempo-Rubato to the Chatelaine and back again, but began and ended in the center of the pond-a gaze wide with expectation and prophetic of demand. And then she spoke-with a slow and distinct deliberation. This magnificent flower, she said, had doubtless been waiting for the coming of the lady on whom it could properly be bestowed. Well, the lady was here (this with a bow toward the Chatelaine that was almost a reverence), the Lady of La Trinité.

There was a slight pause, and in it was faintly heard the whirring of the wings of panic. Tempo-Rubato gave a start and a short, nervous laugh, the Duke paled perceptibly, and the Duchess, with a moist fear in her eyes, laid a detaining hand upon her son's arm; even Finde-Siècle gave a quick little gasp. The Governor should have done as much or more; but he simply looked in a fond, doting way upon the Chatelaine, as much intoxicated by this flattery, as much uplifted by a sense of coming triumph, as were he himself the principal-too sensitive to the fumes of the ideal to give due heed to the lees of the actual, however certain they were to remain behind. As for Aurelia. she realized pretty nearly-though not com pletely-what she was about; she had entered upon a course of splendid audacity, and this step was only a little longer and a little bolder than any preceding one; she honestly believed her friend conspicuously deserving of the best which could be offered; that blind old man had allowed his godchild to disparage herself too long already.

Every one turned to the Chatelaine, but she made no effort to stay the execution of this high-handed decree. She was modest and reasonable enough, but she was too human to be above homage, and too inexperienced to m terpret signs and tokens, however open and abounding. She should have taken TempoRubato's strained bow and forced smile not a a sign of acquiescence eagerly courting encour agement, but as a plea for the averting of a

ruthless sacrifice. She should have seen, from twenty indications, that this one flower was the apple of his parents' eyes, and that to pluck it was like quenching the flame in a lighthouse, like snatching the halo from some saint. A month before she would have shrunk back from so marked an attention, but whiffs of a new atmosphere wafted from afar and laden with adulation now tickled her dilated nostrils; a claim made not by herself, but by another on her behalf, might surely hold; so she stood there quiet, smiling, acquiescent-if her look expressed anything, it expressed a wondering inquiry as to the reason for delay.

Tempo-Rubato set his teeth, and moved to ward the edge of the basin. Aurelia advanced a step, and begged him not to inconvenience himself. To pluck the flower was a privilege, and nobody would appreciate this privilege more highly than Count Fin-de-Siècle; she begged that he would stand back in favor of his friend. But Fin-de-Siècle, thus suddenly brought forward, did not seem very successful in summoning up a look to express his sense of the honor. He glanced timorously at the turbid fluid as it revealed itself obscurely between the curled and huddled pads-a surface that gave no precise indication of depth and positively no information as to the nature of the bottom, which was very likely to be both curving and slippery. The Governor chuckled and encouraged the young man's advance; it was not through fire and water that he was asked to go,-hardly water alone; mud, rather,—and it did not become him to stand too long trembling on the brink. Aurelia, with a mingling of the spiteful and the romantic, tauntingly assured him that every good and true knight held himself in readiness to obey the commands of the sex, and that promptness was half the service. Tempo-Rubato gave audibility to a sardonic smile by means of a short, dry laugh, and laid a propelling hand on the shoulder of his hesitating friend. He himself was to be a victim, but there was some satisfaction in the thought that he was not to be the only one. He was to suffer, indeed, but with dry feet and an unimpaired self-respect.

The Chatelaine received the flower with a gracious serenity. She did not lay too much stress on Fin-de-Siècle's ruined shoes and muddied trousers (he had been obliged to sink on one knee to escape falling flat on his back), nor did her eye dwell too long on the broken pads that remained floating about as witnesses of the struggle. Aurelia fixed a studiously indifferent gaze on a plebeian plant which occupied the nearest ledge, determined to exclude the noteworthy and the exceptional. The Duchess turned toward her son as if to ask what angel what destroying angel-they were entertain

ing unaware. His glance in return seemed to imply the uselessness of denying that she was an angel when even the imps from the lower world acknowledged and proclaimed it.

The complacency of Miss West metamorphosed this dragonade into a tribute and a triumph; but she had always been taught to expect a great deal of men, to express her expectations unreservedly, and to insist most vigorously upon their fulfilment. It was her fundamental belief that the young woman was the corner-stone of the social edifice,-the raison d'être of society,-almost its be-all and end-all. The spokes of the social wheel all centered in her; toward her every function worked, from her many a function proceeded; she both guarded the gates and sat on the throne—at least that was the way it was in America. She knew that Americanization was the impending fate of Europe, and she felt that she must do her share in this great work. Why did she hold a string in her hand if she was not to pull it? Why neglect the cultivation of a precious bulb the coming convolutions of which promised to out-flower Flora herself?

In the mean while she continued her collection of data with regard to remote and nebulous La Trinité. For remote and nebulous indeed was it coming to seem through the responses of its mistress, who met Aurelia's constant and confident interrogations with answers that seemed cold and meager and almost evasive. She seemed unable squarely to face Aurelia's ardent assumption that the splendors of the Vintschgau and the Brienza were to be equaled in a remote and lonely Alpine valley; that poor, homely La Trinité was to rival Meran and Bellagio. She acknowledged her own château, an inn too, a mill, a church, a certain number of chalets; but her responses were quite unadorned by details. As regarded her own habitation, she would confess to a turret or two (Aurelia had imagined a dozen); there was a window, yes, which might fitly be termed an oriel; as for a courtyard, there was a kind of inclosure near the stables which might as well be called that as anything else; and as for a driveway from the village up to her own grand portal (Aurelia's expression), there was a road on which a coach would be practicable, perhaps, though hardly necessary. With these meager particulars the poetess was obliged to content herself.

The matter of the divinity's material environment remained, then, in abeyance, but of the new spirit informing her the delighted Aurelia soon received a token convincing enough. It was near that little open place by the steamboat-landing on which opened the great gates of their own hotel; a place where splendid boatmen lounge with the effect of leaning up against

side-scenes, where strapping young women kneel on the shore and cleanse their towels and table-cloths with a great whacking of wooden paddles and an immense sacrifice of soap-suds, and where lively little girls clatter along under the arcade in loose wooden slippers which only a miracle in constant force seems to keep on their feet. To this place the Chatelaine and her friend had descended from one of the steep and stony little lanes that mount the hillside, and were beguiling their leisure by a few infinitesimal purchases, when another pair came strolling along with a careless and leisurely gait-Tempo-Rubato and Mademoiselle Pasdenom. The Chatelaine was moving on toward a tiny shop before the door of which hung several very neatly turned specimens of the cobbler's art in poplar-wood and tinseled velveteen; but at a sign of greeting from the approaching pair she paused, and Aurelia was presently enabled to gage the

amount of progress that had been made between Lucerne and Bellagio. The Chatelaine had never crushed anybody before. She had never felt an impulse to do so, and she might not have been able to follow up such an impulse to a relentless consummation. But now, to Aurelia West,-though Aurelia, remember, could sometimes see more than there was to see,- no one could have seemed more suddenly, more inflexibly, determined to rend, to cast down, to trample upon, to annihilate more unmistakably risen at last to an eminence which disclosed to her the full knowledge and significance of her place and her powers. But if the Chatelaine had taken an instant to reflect or to discriminate, she might have refrained from a full and ruthless exercise of those powers. The Duchess did, indeed, nod in a familiar fashion to Aurelia, but her manner toward Aurelia's companion was propitiatory, self-derogatory, almost appealing. Certainly, considering the company and the circumstances, this was no place for abject and groveling humility; she could hardly be expected openly to abase herself before Tempo-Rubato. But the Chatelaine was bursting with a capacious indignation, an indignation which even made Aurelia West seem less a victim to this woman than her fellow-conspirator,-and she was far beyond the consideration of finely shaded details. She was of good height, taller than either her friend or her foe,-and a sense of rectitude turned every inch to its fullest account. There was a great capacity for indignation in her full bosom, and for inflexibility in her squared shoulders. Her well-set, uplifted head was easily equal to the expression of a high degree of pride, and its slow turning to one side raised the expression even a degree higher still; while the nervous concentration of the play of her long fingers on her elbow remained a study for the fascinated Aurelia for a week afterward. Her nose, aquiline and cartilaginous, like those of a long line of ancestors, persons of probity and consideration,-seemed equal to the expression of any degree of scorn; and her eye, when unveiled, was the eye of the mountaineer, whose penetrating and hawk-like vision is never more steady and steely than when fixed on some small and remote object that is retiring to a remoteness greater still. And when she spoke,

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