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seven-o'clock dinners and dressing of an evening during their visit. Salute the child for me, and believe in the devotion of yours, SALOME.

"POSTSCRIPT.-It might not be amiss to get up a ball or festivity of some kind to celebrate Paul's return. You would have his authority, I know, to invite the neighborhood, and cooks and fiddlers could be got over from Baden-Baden.'

"Madness! Yes, for once in her life, Salome is right," cries Mamselle Ange, throwing down the letter on the table. "A reigning London beauty, and of a very doubtful kind, to be entertained here at Schloss Egmont, by me! I just look upon it all as a sign of the Von Egmont lunacy-"

"Or of Count Paul's approaching marriagewhich?" cries little Jeanne, bending down her face as she speaks, above her plate.

"Of both," replies Ange, with a kindling cheek. "This beauty, this doll of a London season, will suit him vastly worse than Malva would have done. Malva had red hands and rough ways, and spoke the peasant's dialect. But she had a modest woman's heart within her breast. She could love. Time for me and you to pack up, child," adds Ange hotly. "We shall be wanted for the wedding-feast, perhaps, wanted to set the house in order! Meantime-"

"Meantime," interrupts Wolfgang, with an air of deference, "I trust, mamselle, that my pupil's studies will not be interrupted? It is needful that I go to the Leipsic book-fair for the rest of this week, but I have left Fräulein Jeanne sufficient work to do in my absence. Count Paul's marriage," he adds, not without a certain awkwardness, "would naturally break up all present relations, and, as you think there is a chance of it, we had best extend our studies while we may. Now, a little popular science-"

"Never!" exclaims Mamselle Ange with energy; "I hear enough of popular science. Materialism made easy at the Herr Pastor's teatable. Our thoughts are movements of matter,' says Popular Science, and our souls a pinch of phosphorus

"Mamselle Ange!"

"Yes, yes, Mr. Wolfgang, I have heard the Pastor read aloud his letters from Jena. I know the jargon of the school. We inhabit an accidental world, in which everything that is is for the worst, more miserable, because more intelligent, than an oyster; respecting nothing but the ancestral apes from which we spring, and looking upon Belief as a crutch fit only for sickly minds to lean upon. No science, I thank you, sir, for Jeanne. An elegant handwriting, a cursory knowledge of polite literature, an aptness at quotation, used to be held the fitting accomplishments for a gentle

man. These, with a smattering, perhaps, of Latin and Euclid, are the accomplishments in which I desire that Miss Dempster should be finished."

"Together with proficiency in the manufacture of currant cakes and raspberry vinegar," adds Wolfgang. "The Fräulein's education will be perfect—an admixture of solidity and ornament that would have charmed Jean Jacques himself."

It is already night when the master leaves Schloss Egmont-one of those mystic, moonless nights on which, say the Wald-folk, the good and evil spirits of the forest walk abroad; Dutch Michael, in his seven-league boots, a ship's mast for his staff, and chanting, in a terrible voice, his litany of temptation:

"Gold for him who will buy

Who will buy?

Gold at a trifling cost: only your souls to be lost— Who will buy?"—

the friendly Glassman, with burnished hair and beard, with clothing of spun glass, ready to bestow good gifts on all such human children (provided they were born between three and four of a Sunday afternoon) as shall cross his path.

It is already night; but Jeanne and Wolfgang linger over their farewells beside the outer gate of the courtyard. A roll of exercise-books, to be corrected, is under the master's arm; his pockets are weighted with the bottles of raspberry vinegar which Ange, in the fullness of her pity for his needs, has insisted upon his carrying away.

"Good night and good-by, Fräulein Jeanne." As he speaks, Wolfgang takes his pupil's slender hand between his own. "I shall be away five days. Such things have been known as people forgetting each other in less than five days. Don't take example by your fine, do-nothing London visitors. Get as much Euclid as you can into your head before my return."

"Euclid-always Euclid!" murmurs the child, drawing her hand away with a movement of petulance.

"Yes, always Euclid, as Mamselle Ange has laid an embargo on popular science. By the way, how many weeks is it since Mamselle Ange first engaged me to give you lessons? Seven-eight, is it not?"

"Eight weeks exactly, sir. Hans had been carrying our first hay the evening you came to speak to Ange. I was in the cart-do you remember?"

"And you threw me a wild rose-you gave me a smile as I passed. Yes, I remember, Jeanne; the last eight weeks have been the happiest of my life!"

Well for Jeanne that her hand is in her own

keeping; well for her that the darkness hides her forth, lantern in hand, to make her last rounds changing color from the master's sight.

"You have the gift of teaching, I should say, Mr. Wolfgang." If a whole jury of impaneled matrons were present to give her moral support, Jeanne's tone could not be more correctly frigid. "Whatever one does well, one likes. Still," she adds shyly, “happiness is a strong word to use in connection with Latin declensions, English parsing, and a stupid pupil."

"That depends upon one's power of tolerating stupid pupils, Jeanne" (after a pause. With youth in one's veins a pause, on a summer night like this, comes dangerously near a caress). "Do you know that I am going back to my stifling Freiburg garret a rich man ?"

"Rich in the possession of some cloudy raspberry vinegar and a pile of blotted copy-books," says the girl, with a somewhat forced laugh.

"Rich in the possession of a secret from which I would not part for all the money of all the Jews in Freiburg."

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for the night. "I never listen to their superstitions, as you know, child" (our good Ange has every ghostly legend of the district at her fingers' ends), "still, there is no falsehood without a grain of truth at bottom, and the Tannenbühl firs look blacker than I care to see to-night. What in the world has that man Wolfgang been saying to you?"

What, indeed! Jeanne's heart beats thick and fast. She glances, in a tremor half delight half fear, across the starlit courtyard toward the forest. All is silent. If the spirits of the Wald are abroad, and have listened, they keep her secret well.

CHAPTER III.

A HYDE PARK GODDESS.

DURING the next five days, Schloss Egmont undergoes, from roof to basement, the process horribly familiar to all thrifty Marthas throughout the Fatherland of "Hausputzen." Cobwebs, thick with the dust of ages, are swept down; tapestries, moth-eaten into lace-work, are hung up; mirrors and candelabra are unswathed from the brown Holland surtouts beneath which, during the damps of more than a dozen winters, they have been growing gradually lusterless. The blue, or best, bedchamber, untenanted since

"But I am ignorant. What do I know of the death of the last Countess, has been set your life—your hopes?" she stammers.

"Repeat the words," he persists, in the tone Jeanne has never found it possible to disobey. "It does not matter in the slightest degree whether you understand their import."

For a moment or two longer Jeanne hesitates. Wolfgang lifts her hand within a couple of inches of his lips.

"Take my advice. Be quick," he tells her, with meaning, "or you will have yourself to thank for the consequences."

"I wish-it is the most foolish thing I ever said in my life, Mr. Wolfgang, but you force me into saying it—I wish you joy."

He looks, by such light as the stars afford, into the girl's transparently truthful face; then quietly loosens his hold on her hand and turns from her without another word. Away above the vineyards, along the straight white road that leads from Egmont to the outer world, Jeanne watches him-away until his figure is lost to sight among the purple darkness of the surrounding Wald. The clock of St. Ulrich village church is striking as she turns, lingeringly, reluctantly, in the direction of the Schloss.

"Eleven o'clock-Dutch Michael's hour," cries Mamselle Ange, who at this moment is sallying

ready for Miss Vivash. An enchantress, whose smile has turned the wisest heads in Europe, a goddess whom artists rush to paint and poets to sing, will infallibly, so Ange theorizes, turn out a rose-water divinity, a vaporous, artificial doll, to whom faded azure hangings, spindle-legged tables, and last-century cabinets will form a fitting background. Jeanne's pretty little schoolroom (the scene of many a too happy lesson during the past eight weeks) has been given up, in order that Beauty may have a boudoir. The village has been rifled to furnish her balcony with flowers. Fräu Pastor Myer has lent a chevalglass, brought from Paris at the time of the Pastor's marriage, wherein Beauty may survey her charms. And then a room must be organized within ringing-distance-no easy matter at Schloss Egmont—for Beauty's maid; and there must be an apartment on the same floor for Beauty's chaperon; and another apartment for Sir Christopher Marlowe, the tame Baronet who usually follows in Beauty's wake.

"Salome talks about fiddlers and cooks from Baden-Baden," remarks Mamselle Ange, with temper. "Much good fiddlers and cooks would have been in such upholsterer's work as ours! But that is just the airy Von Egmont manner.

'Get ready a dinner for to-day, my best mamselle,' the old Count used to say. 'A dozen friends are coming unexpectedly from Freiburg. What shall you provide for us? Anything. Improvise as you like, so long as you give us our wine cool.' This in August, perhaps; not a pound of ice to be got in the whole country round. 'And let each course be of the best, and well served.' It is the same story still. Inaugurate late dinners; dressing of an evening; invite the neighborhood; get cooks and fiddlers from Baden-Baden!' I hope," adds Ange, with staccatoed emphasis-"I hope sincerely that Paul will marry his Beauty and be happy with her. I hope my reign is over. I hope Schloss Egmont is going to have a lawful mistress at last."

The five-days' Hausputzen has come to an end; the last touch is given to expectant preparation; and in the big bare guest-room Ange and Jeanne, full-dressed according to Schwarzwald notions, and with their hands folded in unnatural idleness, await their London visitors. Oh, the discomfort of the high-backed chairs, the faded meagerness of the yellow satin curtains! Oh, the Chinese monsters on the stove! Oh, the long-dead court-goddesses, who simper in pastel, with arched eyebrows, cushioned hair, and impossible waists, from the gilt-and-white panels of this stateliest, chilliest, least habitable apartment of the Schloss!

In vain have Ange and her handmaid dusted; in vain has Jeanne decked every available shelf, bracket, and table with flowers. The most diligent Hausputzen can not displace the moral cobwebs; the sweetest rose-odor can not dispel the intangible sense of mildew that haunts the walls, the belongings, the very aristocratic atmosphere of the Von Egmont guest-room.

"Except the Baden-Baden Tanzsaal, I suppose there is nothing like it in the duchy," little Jeanne says, glancing round her with pride. "The only doubt is-do we go well with yellow satin? The Beauty and her friends will scarcely trouble themselves to look at us, I dare say. Still, one would not like to disgrace Count Paul in the sight of his London guests."

And, crossing the room, the girl sets herself to the contemplation of Ange's figure and her own, reflected back, as they are, by an ancient and proportionably unflattering mirror, crookedly hung (everything at Schloss Egmont, from pewter inkstands up to Venetian glass, has a touch of obliquity about it) between the central windows.

Little Jeanne has the true Raphael-red hair, the deep, dark eyes of the Madonna del San Sisto. More than one painter traveling through the Wald in search of "sacred" coloring has sought her as a sitter. Sought her in vain. With

Malva's history serving as warning, what girl, within a dozen miles of St. Ulrich, would lend her face as a model for the Holy Mother? Her skin is palely clear, varying with every varying feeling of the quickest, most emotional of natures; her unformed figure inclines to lankness; her shoulders stoop at times; the bridge of her nose is not innocent of a freckle or two; and her smile is a gleam of pure sunshine! She has attired herself on the present occasion in the best frock-second, of course, to her confirmation muslin-that her scanty wardrobe owns a kind of serviceable white dimity much affected for Sunday wear by the young women of the district, shrunk by repeated washings, and showing more wrist and ankle than ever entered into the original intention of the village dressmaker. Her hair, in all its plenitude of red, is set forth in a multitude of the towering plaits dear to the provincial Teutonic mind. A coral necklace, dating from Mamselle Ange's infancy, is round her throat. She wears a white cambric apron, doublesoled shoes of honest, Schwarzwald manufacture, and a pair of open-work stockings, knitted by the Frau Pastor as a birthday present, and never put on save for the high and solemn ceremonial days of life.

So much for little Jeanne; now for Ange, our "best mamselle," elaborately dressed for company, and as well satisfied with the result of her labors as though the prince of man-milliners had consented, for some two or three thousand francs, to make her his "study." A tall, spare maiden the wrong side of fifty-Mamselle Ange has been the wrong side of fifty as far back as Jeanne's memory can stretch-indistinct of feature, with yellow hair arranged in curls on either side a cannon-ball forehead, with a reddish complexion; with laces, lappets, garnitures, all arranged upon a dozen different conflicting models, and all crooked. (In writing this word I would not hint that Mamselle Ange is disfigured, morally or physically, by any actual twist. She is, on the contrary, upright of structure as an ostrich, a bird at which I can never look without being reminded of her. Neither, scrutinizing her appearance in detail, could you state, specifically, in which particular garment the want of balance resides. And still, notably on this evening when the London guests are to arrive, does the whole voluminous structure seem to totter to its fall.) Her cap-ribbon is blue-when does an ancient blonde forsake her standard ?—her dress a sagegreen silk, dating from some epoch when our race it would seem affected "patterns," woven in vari-color, along a multitude of flounces. She is redolent of lavender-water confectioned in the Egmont still-room, and all unlike the foreignflavored essences of London or Paris; is adorned

by a Japanese fan, never before known to emerge from silver paper into the light of day, by a museum of hair-rings, and on her breast by the portrait of a Macgregor, with high cheek-bones and an upper lip, in a kilt.

"I hope," says little Jeanne, with solemn eagerness-"I hope we don't look dreadfully like the dancing ladies in the booths at Freiburg Fair? It may be only the effect of the window-curtains, of course, but we are not in tune." Although she has never heard of South Kensington, Jeanne is instinct to the very finger-tips with artistic feeling. "Ought we to be paler about the hair and skin, do you suppose? Or ought they not to be yellow satin?"

"Salmon-color and yellow are death to a fine complexion," Mamselle Ange enunciates with authority. "I said so to Dolores when first she chose the hangings. But we know what these Spanish women are! Coquetry or devotion, a mantilla or a priest, all the poor dear thought of was her own sallow cheeks. I have been killed, murdered by yellow satin during a quarter of a century, and but for my pious bringing up should infallibly have been driven into rouge. There was the difference in our position. Up to the day of her death Dolores used to put on her ermine with no more scruple than she did her rosary, and I have no doubt Paul's goddess, Miss Vivian Vivash, will have the same elastic conscience. Miss Vivian Vivash!" repeats Ange in stinging accents. "There is a straining after effect in the alliteration, an impertinence in the juxtaposition of the letters. To think, after thirty years' fidelity, that I should be displaced by such a successor, the vapid beauty of a London season, the idol of tobacconists and photographers, a milliner's block, a setter of fashions, a Vivian Vivash!"

Scarcely has the name left Mamselle Ange's lips when the crunch of wheels, the cracking of whips, resound from the courtyard. There comes a minute of keen expectancy; little Jeanne, like one under the influence of hasheesh, feels as if these intense sixty seconds equaled a year of common life! The tones of a woman's voice, loud, drawling, uneducated, are heard in the entrance-hall; and then the salon-door is thrown open, and Vivian the Beauty stands there.

And the first thought of Ange and Jeanne alike-the first thought of those poor uncultivated heathen is, that the great London beauty possesses no beauty at all. So much is training needed for appreciation of really high art on or off canvas in our day!

A sandy blonde by nature, with the phlegmatic temperament, the dense, bloodless complexion of the type, Vivian's hair is deepened artificially to a lusterless, inky black. She wears it

plainly drawn from a brow that with all its snows, with all its handsome carvings, is soulless. The nose is common-if it were not for the verdict of St. James's Street, one would be tempted to call it broad. The jawbone is square; the lips are full as the lips of an octoroon. Miss Vivash has strong, white teeth, eyebrows carefully selected to match her hair, a pair of unabashed, steel-colored eyes, an excruciating waist, a throat, and shoulders. She wears a tight-fitting, pearl-gray traveling-dress, a tiny, pearl-gray hat, with a solitary tuft of gilt feathers, pearl-gray gloves and boots, and a necklet of dead gold. Not a discordant tint, not a superabundant gather or fold-indeed, the Beauty's dress would seem not so much to belong to her as to be herself. In little Jeanne's attire, as in Mamselle Ange's, buttons and hooks are not unfrequently notable by their deficiency. Mortal eye can not discern the means whereby Miss Vivash divests herself of that shimmering, foldless dress of hers unless it be by some mysterious snake-like process of sloughing. There is, indeed, an indescribable look about her whole person—the small head thrown back upon the thick throat, the gleam of gold, the pale, chill eyes—that causes Jeanne, in this first moment of meeting, to recall the gliding, deadly inhabitants of the Schloss moat with a shudder. The impression, like most of little Jeanne's "fancies," is destined to stand the test of time.

"And so this is Schloss Egmont! I didn't think such a hideous place was possible out of a pre-Raphaelite nightmare. What a paper, what curtains! I feel a moral indigestion already. And you" (she produces a pair of double glasses and gives Jeanne a cruel stare—a stare such as high-born dames, not beauties, are in the habit, doubtless, of bestowing upon herself)—“ you, I suppose, are the Mamselle Ange of whom our dear Princess spoke?"

(For Beauty is on so equal a footing with titled personages that she talks of them ever in such terms as "dear" and "sweet"! Unless, indeed, titled personages chance to have offered her a rebuff-when hey, presto! flow expressions the reverse of pearls and diamonds from those roseate but plebeian lips.)

Mamselle Ange rises, with stiff politeness, and prepares to do the honors. She has stood too much on her own dignity to meet the travelers at the house-door. Miss Vivash may be the most beautiful woman in Europe-may be the future mistress of Schloss Egmont-Mamselle Ange is a Macgregor and a gentlewoman, bound to show hospitable courtesy to Paul von Egmont's guests; but as an equal, not a dependent.

"Miss Vivash and her friends," she remarks, with a courtesy of thirty years ago, are welcome

to the Black Forest. Being uncertain whether you would take refreshment on the road, I—”

"Refreshment!" interrupts Vivian with the point-blank rudeness that sits so naturally on her. "We were present at a cannibal repast, somewhere, at some unearthly hour of the morning. Every conceivable variety of nastiness-raw ham, sour cabbage, sausages, and upward of a hundred natives-you are one of them, doubtless? -devouring, fearfully and wonderfully, with their knives!"

categorically. You see before you, ladies, Miss Vivian Vivash, of cosmopolitan celebrity" (with a showman-like wave of the hand indicating Beauty-poor Beauty, whose head, like that of Lamb's Scotchman, must go through an anatomical operation ere a joke could enter it). “Miss Vivash has had the honor of appearing, ladies, before half the crowned heads in Europe, has been photographed for the public in thirty-five different attitudes, and is commonly supposed to be the most marvelous specimen of our race ever

Ange draws up her spare figure to its fullest beheld since the days of Solomon! Secondly, height.

"Every nation has its own manners, as every class in life has its ideas of breeding," she remarks sententiously.

The Beauty condescends not to reply: she continues to stare at the faded yellow curtains, the tasteless hangings, the high-backed chairs, the figures of the housekeeper and little Jeanne -continues to stare steadily through that double eye-glass familiar to every idle apprentice of the London streets, with an air of mock criticism at once languid and aggressive.

"

"I declare it is all quite too deliciously horrid," she drawls at length. "Lady Pamela-Sir Christopher") turning to two new personages who, at this moment, make their appearance in the doorway), come and see what is to be seen. I have agreed to spend a fortnight here— two weeks, fourteen days-hours that it would require a Babbage machine to calculate-and I look to you, between you, to hinder me from committing suicide."

Lady Pamela Lawless is about as plain as it is possible for a woman possessing youth and health to be; and still, go where she will, Lady Pamela's fresh, frank, irregular face is a popular one. Needless to speak of defect of feature where all is defect. Lady Pamela has a complexion honestly white-and-red as a Lancashire rose, a pair of humorously twinkling greenish eyes, fifteen hundred a year absolutely under her own control, and dimples. She is dressed in a white serge short enough to allow you to do more than guess at a pair of pretty ankles, scarlet stockings, and a cap to match— -a cap of the form known, I believe, in the trade, as the "Vivian toquet."

If Mamselle Ange and Jeanne gazed, awestruck, at Beauty's sheeny, snake-like gracefulness, you may imagine how their eyes widen at the ankle-short skirt, the head-dress, the scarlet stockings of Lady Pamela Lawless!

"It seems that we shall have to introduce ourselves." And, stepping forward, Lady Pamela bestows a hearty hand-shake, first on Mamselle Ange, then on Jeanne. "As I am chaperon of the party, suppose I go through the ceremony

Lady Pamela Lawless" (accompanying the mention of her own name with a bob-courtesy like a charity schoolgirl's). "And, thirdly, Sir Christopher Marlowe, of whom Shakespeare wrote, prophetically, in divers texts: 'He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks an infinite deal of nothing, he smells of April and May. From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth. He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bow-string, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him more.""

Sir Christopher Marlowe is a very small, scrupulously dandified man of seven- or eightand-twenty. In the present free-and-easy generation of wideawakes and shooting-jackets, many men lie open to the charge of bringing the country into Pall Mall. Sir Christopher carries Pall Mall about with him like an atmosphere. He is as pink-complexioned as any lovely wax Adonis in a barber's window, regular of feature, with dark mustache, and inch-long regulation whiskers; wears a tall hat and frock-coat, even when he travels; wears guillotine collars, pointed boots, a crutch, and a bracelet-and, withal, is one of the finest-hearted little English gentlemen in the world! As a leader of cotillions, a singer of after-dinner songs, an amateur actor, a stout rider across country, who does not know "Kit Marlowe"? Who (among his own set, at least) did not rejoice when, at the close of last season, Vivian the Beauty-stalking bigger game just then-thought fit to jilt him? Sir Christopher is Beauty's slave to this hour," says the section of the world who believe that there can be no kernel in this light nut; that the soul of the man is his clothes. "See how Quixotically he makes himself the champion of her fame! How he stood by her-when so many fell away-after that affair at the Orleans! How constantly he remains her shadow, go where she will! The Beauty has but to lift a finger, and she can become Lady Marlowe to-morrow." Kit Marlowe's friends those, more especially, who watched him recover from the first shock of Vivian's infidelity—think otherwise.

"The Princess ought to have warned one positively of the treat that was in store," re

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