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made the entire circuit of the Schloss gardens. Suddenly, as the last accents of the Chodd tragedy die on Lady Pamela's lips, they come in sight of Sir Christopher Marlowe, outstretched upon the patch of smooth green turf that borders the moat, and violently flirting, in pantomime, with Elspeth, whose peony face bobs coquettishly backward and forward at one of the basement windows.

Sir Christopher springs, somersaults rather to his feet, on being thus discovered; advances with a fantastic kind of little Dundreary run; then sinks on his knees before Jeanne, in an attitude of stage despair, and lifts her hand to his lips.

of breezy morning sunshine, of May roses, of a brook's music, and, in common with most of nature's cheeriest gifts, asks nothing from you in return. Falling short of all the stern moralities, all the big aims of existence, living, in fact, "beyond the diocese of the strict conscience," he is really the very happiest, most happiness-giving of human creatures, a flesh-and-blood refutation of the pessimist philosophers, who now, in this nineteenth century, have migrated, after the fashion of their kind, from Germany to Oxford.

No moral dyspepsia, or feeling of his own pulse, no questioning as to whether life be worth living for Sir Christopher! Honest in his epicurean principles, he gathers honey, like the hymn

The girl breaks from him, breathless with in- book bee, from every opening flower, and is condignation.

"If these be London manners," she is beginning hotly

"They be the manners of Kit Marlowe," cries Lady Pamela, with her careless laugh. "Sir Christopher is a licensed jester, my dear simplicity, and no one, even in squeamish Babylon, takes umbrage at him. In this generation of dullards, we are only too thankful to any harlequin who will wear the cap, and jingle the bells for us gratuitously.—Jingle them a little now, Sir Christopher! Dance a breakdown, sing a burlesque. Do something that shall make this miracle of propriety give a hearty human laugh."

"I would rather make the miracle of propriety thaw into a tender human smile," says Kit Marlowe. "A burlesque, indeed! I will melt Jeanne's obdurate heart by the most pathetic ballad ever written in the English language."

And then in a small, not unmusical tenor voice he trolls forth a verse or two from one of the latest songs (ironically called comic) of the music-halls. Long before it is over, Lady Pamela, whose yawns have ever advanced in a crescendo scale, has vanished.

"Take me under your protection, Fräulein Jeanne," says Sir Christopher, with solemn mock gallantry. Accept my arm, teach me my way about the place, and let us endeavor, as far as may be, not to fall in love with one another."

Little Jeanne is too shy to say him nay. She rests her slender finger-tips on Sir Christopher's arm, accompanies him along every fragrant border, through every rose-embowered terrace of the vast old garden, and when, an hour later, they reënter the house, is in love-not so much with Sir Christopher Marlowe as with herself, and with the universe in which she holds an unimportant place!

Wiser heads, graver hearts than Jeanne Dempster's might well surrender to the airy gayety, the never-ending animal spirits of Kit Marlowe. He has the effect upon your nerves

tent.

"The Mirabels and Dorimants of comedy," said Elia, "must not be judged in our every-day law-courts. They get out of Christendom into a land where pleasure is duty, and the manners perfect freedom; a happy breathing-place from the burden of a perpetual moral questioning."

Sir Christopher's friends-who that knows him is not his friend?—are well disposed to give him a like benefit of clergy.

"Little Kit Marlowe is a general benefactor," Lady Pamela Lawless has been heard to declare"a tonic, pro bono publico, a pick-me-up for all who need. As well dissect a butterfly with a tomahawk, as well weigh sunshine (oh, yes, I know all about Mr. Crookes and the radiometer) as well weigh sunshine in a grocer's scales, as apply rule-of-thumb measurement to the character and motives of Sir Christopher Marlowe."

And society-with a shrug of the shoulders, it may be, an elevation of the eyebrow, a whisper behind the fan-society, on the whole, is disposed to indorse the sentiments of Lady Pamela !

CHAPTER VII.

BEWARE!

"SOCIETY! You have made vastly creditable social progress, Miss Dempster, considering the shortness of your apprenticeship — vastly creditable, in truth."

The dark oak walls of Count Paul's study are unillumined by lamp or candle. Such light as the young moon yields falls full upon the boy's portrait, upon the marble heads of Goethe and Schiller above the book-shelf. Beside an open window Jeanne and her master, a foot or two apart, are deep in converse: Wolfgang, cigar in hand, upon a projecting ledge or balcony that surrounds the tower; Jeanne inside, her elbows

resting on the sill, her face outstretched to court the dewy, fragrant freshness of the night.

"It gives me pleasure to merit your praise, at last, sir," she remarks demurely. "During the last eight weeks I have worked, to the best of my belief, well. This is the first time you have been good enough to encourage me by such a word as 'progress.' I am grateful to you."

And, raising herself to her full height, she makes him a mocking little courtesy, then stands before the window with meek face, with arms crossed, as if in humility, upon her breast.

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A bitter little laugh breaks from Jeanne's lips. With the story of Mr. Samuel Chodd, the Twickenham dinner, Lord Vauxhall-with Lady Pamela's budget of town scandal fresh in her recollection, this old-fashioned word "sensibility," as applied to Miss Vivash, is too much for her. A woman of the world will listen composedly to an unworthy rival's praise; Jeanne is seventeen! Indignation, vanity, quick shame, quicker jealousy, every honest emotion of her girlish heart may be read by him who runs. It takes a good "We will leave gratitude alone, sir. many more than seventeen years to perfect huflattered, if you like the expression better, by man beings in that hardest of all hardly acquired your high opinion of me." virtues-magnanimity.

“Grateful?” repeats Wolfgang, coolly skeptical. "Yes, till to-night I might have been weak enough to credit you with such a feeling! I see you now as you are, Miss Dempster-open to sweet words, won by any idle coxcomb, by any cajoling voice that speaks, like the rest."

I am

"Flattered-by the talk of Sir Christopher Marlowe, the first empty-brained, eye-glassed popinjay who has happened to cross your path." Although, on common occasions, the master speaks English admirably, his accents, the moment he is moved, take a cadence unmistakably Teutonic. At his pronunciation of the word popinjay, Jeanne smiles.

"In English, sir, it is not our custom to say bobbingjay. Excuse my want of politeness, but you have so often asked me to correct you, if need were, and these 'B's' and 'P's' are really stumbling-blocks to a Chairman tongue.”

Wolfgang scans her for a few seconds, grimly silent. "Jeanne," he then begins, flinging away his cigar, and, with a quick spring, entering the study-window, "what did yonder poor little dandy find to say to you during the sixty minutes or more that you and he were walking about alone in the moonlight ?"

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'In the absence," says little Jeanne, turning her head aside, and playing a grand imaginary fantasia on the window-frame, "of—Lord Vauxhall, for instance."

The master watches her averted face narrowly.

"What nonsense are you talking about?" he asks her, in a tone of real displeasure. "Who has been filling your head with such subjects? Lord Vauxhall's is not a name that I choose-you understand me, Jeanne, that I choose to hear from your lips."

"But Lord Vauxhall is Miss Vivash's greatest friend, sir-think of that!-the friend of a girl full of fine, exalted feeling, romance, sensibility! His first wife managed to break her heart, I am told; his second one has the ill luck to be shut up in an asylum. But his manners are perfect! Lord Vauxhall takes his hat off with a better grace than any man in Europe; and as to his Twickenham dinners-"

"Lord Vauxhall's domestic history! Lord

The abrupt side-wind seems to take Mr. Vauxhall's Twickenham dinners!" exclaims Wolfgang somewhat aback.

Wolfgang hotly. "And pray what have you, a

simple Black Forest maiden, to do with such things?"

Little Jeanne claps her hands; she dances, with wary speed, beyond arm's reach of the

master.

"I have been listening to improving town talk for a good many hours, sir. It may be that I have a better memory for London scandal than I have for Latin verbs and propositions in Euclid. Lord Vauxhall" (dwelling with a child's perverse pleasure on the forbidden name) "is not unknown to you, it seems, by reputation? Did you ever, in the intervals of mathematical study, chance to hear of Mr. Samuel Chodd? Birmingham scissors-people, you know, weak as water about lords and honorables, and deliciously apoplectic!' Samuel's papa married the Lady Ermengarde Vauxhall, and was considerate enough to die within a twelvemonth."

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The master remains silent, his eyes fixed upon Jeanne's clear and guileless face. "You talk as if I were a dandy fresh, like your friend Sir Christopher, from Piccadilly," he remarks presently"I, a penniless, itinerant teacher, hawking such poor brains as I possess about the country-side, or settling myself for a few months in a neighborhood, as the charcoal-burners do, if I can get a little chance employment from my betters. Rich scissors-people-Lord Vauxhall-Lady Ermengarde-I know just as much of such people as you knew yesterday, Fräulein Jeanne."

I

"Yesterday is not to-day, Mr. Wolfgang. feel wiser" (her voice sinking a little), "oh, wiser by twenty years, than I did before our guests arrived."

"Too wise to come out for a last turn upon the terrace with me? The forest is overshadowed the owls have left off calling to each other. In ten minutes more yonder black cloud will have reached the moon. Will you come?"

"Yes" is in Jeanne's eyes-on her lips; the spirit of contradiction is at her heart. "Mamselle Ange will want me in the guest-room, sir. I have no more time to waste. We are to have a grand reception to-night-the Herr Pastor and his wife, in addition to our English visitors—and perhaps the Frau Pastor will play us some dancemusic, as she does at Christmas. I wonder" (with malicious show of interest) "if Sir Christopher Marlowe is too fine a gentleman to waltz?" The master moves aside without answering; for a minute or more he watches the darkening western terrace-the terrace where five evenings ago little Jeanne told him Malva's history, where to-night he has played audience to the exalted feelings, the romance, the sensibility of Miss Vivash! When he looks round again his pupil is standing just within the open door, ready for flight.

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"I SCORE a royal marriage, my best Frau Pastor, and make sure of my game."

The guest-room wears a look of company unknown in Schloss Egmont since the longburied days when princes and prime ministers were wont to kneel at the Countess Dolores's feet. The chandeliers blaze with wax-lights; the mothfretted satin curtains, the scantily gilt chairs and consoles, the pastel court beauties, are looking their bravest ; and, in all the majesty of blue ribbon and many-colored flounces, Mamselle Ange conducts her reception.

"Village pastors and their wives never got beyond the servants' hall," Ange will tell you confidentially, “in the times when German society was society. In these revolutionary days no one knows where to draw the line." Besides, has not the Frau Pastor helped one with the made dishes, and does not all the neighborhood know that the poor soul is respectably connected —a sixteenth, or thereabouts, of patrician blood on the maternal side, and related by marriage to the most noble Herr Oberkammermeister at the Residenz ?

The pastor is a large square man, with large square feet, incased in village-made shoes, that fit them-a pastor with dingy linen, a vast, blank forehead, a rugged voice, the manners of a Diogenes, and the heart of a little child! Like many another of his country's divines, Herr Pastor Meyer, during his thirty years of rural ministry,

has struck up liaison after liaison with the passing philosophers of the day. The works of men who have for their motto, "Il faut sabrer la théologie," lie openly on his study-table. His sermons are filled by turns with the rationalistic affability of Schleiermacher, and the cloudy mysticism, leading nowhere, of the Hegelites. Such of his weekday hours as he can spare from his pigs and mangel-wurzel, are occupied over a ponderous book, still in manuscript, on the "Evolution of Being out of not Being," or "The Blank at the Center of the Cosmos." He corresponds-'tis the innocent glory of his life to boast of it-with Haeckel, of Jena, and, to the scandal of Mamselle Ange, reads aloud the pamphlets of Büchner and Vogt-the popular "deifiers of matter "-with the same impartial gusto as he devours schinkenroh, sauerkraut, wurst, and pfannkuchen at his own tea-table.

The Frau Pastor is lean and wire-drawn as a metaphysical abstraction, the very converse of her spouse. It has been already said that the worthy pair visited Paris on their wedding tour. Frau Meyer dresses still as the Paris world, seen by provincial eyes, dressed in 'fifty-five: hair, or remains of hair, brought low upon the cheeks, voluminous skirts, hanging sleeves, and a crinoline. The good Frau Pastor, whose age may just fall short of the half century, wears also a necklace of mock pearls, a plume of maraboutfeathers, an artificial rose, spectacles, and a touch of rouge! Yes-on the honor of a faithful historian-spectacles and rouge!

Is not taste, as some broad thinkers aver of conscience, a matter of latitude and longitude?

A Parisian-her forty years well struck gives a shrug of the shoulders over her dead youth, then buries it decently in a shroud of black lace (haunted by a just perceptible pathetic odor of patchouli), for evermore. A German wreathes roses round the poor corpse's head, strings beads round its throat, bares its arms, smears a touch of red on its cheek-bone, and parades it boldly forth, in the glare of day, a distress to gods and men.

quarante hollow. In the days when I used to addle my head over books of averages at Monaco, I saw no excitement to come up to it. Twenty for a royal marriage, eleven for an ace, six-andsixty counts one; and the longer you play the lower your score.—Some morning, when you are at leisure, Miss Dempster," he turns appealingly to Jeanne, "I shall ask you to unriddle for me the mysteries of six-and-sixty."

Do you know the game, reader? I speak from knowledge, solid, concrete experience gained during the lagging hours of many a German winter, when I call it the dreariest, lengthiest, hardest form of arithmetic that twisted human intelligence ever gilded over with the name of play. You start at a supposed score of nine; you clutch at a visionary six-and-sixty which you perpetually fall short of or overstep; you work back—through what interminable convolutions of kings, queens, and their marriages-to nothing; and when you are nothing, you have won! Cards, they say, were invented for the amusement of a mad French king. For the delectation of what doubly mad German König or Kaiser could the heart of man have hit upon the dull, difficult, interminable set of combinations styled six-and-sixty?

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Mamselle Ange loves it with passion. The intricate, backward-moving score, the crooked twists and turns, the airy inconclusiveness of every detail of the game, possess, I doubt not, nice affinities with the constitution of her own mind. Whist and chess are played by rule," she will say disdainfully. "They can be learned like a primer. At six-and-sixty you never know what is coming, or where you are; and, as the winning-point is zero, your hopes are kept up to the last." Often have Ange and the Frau Pastor been known to seat themselves at a card-table by two o'clock of a December afternoon, and play at six-and-sixty, losing their tempers and their pfennigs, alternately, till supper-time. Looking over their hands on such occasions, it has sometimes seemed to Jeanne that neither opponent was strictly correct in her play. Extraneous circumstances, however the waning light, the drift

Does the Teuton woman or the Frank, pray, ing snow against the window-frame, the howling exhibit the more genuine philosophy?

"Yes, I score a royal marriage," cries Mamselle Ange, looking up from the card-table where she and the Frau Pastor are playing their accustomed game of six-and-sixty (the pastor, tired after his day's plowing, is sleeping the sleep of the just in an adjacent stiff-backed chair), "and I lead the king of trumps, six-and-sixty. This brings my score down to one."

of the north wind in the forests—may have been to blame. And if there had been no little errors, where had been the disputes-the human element, the very salt and savor of the game!

"Yes, Jeanne can teach you the rudiments, Sir Christopher, although she is but a spiritless player. Jeanne knows the rules of six-and-sixty as well as I do. And perhaps," says Ange, “you might induce Miss Vivash to join you" (glancSir Christopher Marlowe, who is standing be- ing across at the sofa on which Beauty is talking, side the card-players, assumes an air of liveliest in low whispers, with practiced slow smiles, to interest. Wolfgang-Lady Pamela, in her due position as "The game beats roulette and trente-et- chaperon, at their side). "By starting from eigh

teen, instead of nine, it could be turned into an exceedingly pretty parti for three, though of course the counting would be more complicated."

"A game for three," muses Sir Christopher, "to be played by Jeanne Dempster, Vivian Vivash, and Kit Marlowe! An exceedingly pretty parti; with a complicated reckoning, and Herr Wolfgang left in the cold.-Jeanne, my dear," in a tone of sudden mock alarm, "we must take care of our peace of mind, in earnest. I am not a bad-looking fellow if the popular voice may be believed, and you—”

Sir Christopher's words sink into a whisper; Jeanne's telltale face blushes and dimples; and Beauty, who all this time is watching them through half-closed eyelids, changes color. The defalcation of the least among her slaves, of the coldest among her discarded suitors, causes this woman pain more keen, it may be, than the pangs of worthy love. So nicely balanced, in the main, is the sum of human suffering.

"Come hither, Jeanne," she cries, turning away from Wolfgang, with her high-handed abruptness.-"You too, Sir Christopher. We are holding a council of war, Mr. Wolfgang and Idiscussing the possibility of diverting ourselves, in this benighted place, until our host's arrival. The question is, What shall our diversion be? -Pamela, my dear, suppose you wake up sufficiently to vouchsafe an opinion."

"My opinion is in favor of skittles," says Lady Pamela, lazily unclosing a pair of sleepy eyes. "There is a capital alley in the garden-a Kegelbahn, as the classic vernacular of the country has it."

"You will never find a better game than sixand-sixty," cries Ange, “and I believe, with a little calculation, it could easily be turned into a round game. We might invite over the honorable ladies from Katzenellenbogen, and—”

"I mean to get up theatricals," interrupts Vivian, with the artless rudeness that her adorers pronounce to be irresistible. "The dear Princess gave me carte blanche to turn Schloss Egmont inside out, from turret to foundationstone, and I intend to do so. 'No audience,' do I hear some malcontent remark? We will send invitations to every visitable person in the duchy of Baden.—There is a cavalry depot, you say, at Freiburg, Mr. Wolfgang? Then there are these Brummagen Highnesses at the Residenz." Ange glances ceilingward, as though to avert Heaven's wrath at the profanity. "And if the worst come to the worst" (drawing up her white throat), "one might order over spectators from London. First nights we attend, but never unbend,' of course. Still, a bored detachment from the Crutch and Toothpick would be better than no

thing. We can get over dresses from England in three days, and we will fix the performance for the evening of Count von Egmont's return."

Vivian is really animated. A flush suffuses the dead whiteness of her skin; life comes into her pale eyes. At this moment you could imagine what she would be-not in the presence of the man who loved her, unless, indeed, that man's hands were filled with diamonds-but before a crowd of worshipers, mobbed in the park of a Sunday, the cynosure of all eyes in an exhibitionroom beneath her own portrait. Publicity of some kind, of any kind, is a vital condition to her. moral ozone, without which she can scarcely draw breath. Even at the project of theatricals in this dull old German house, before a visionary audience, the soul in her-I cancel the expression— the leading passion in her awakens, and with it her beauty. She glances amicably at the different faces round the room-on Wolfgang she looks as, surely, no woman so courted, so handsome, has ever looked yet.

"A count in the hand," according to Lady Pamela's dictum, "is worth a Chodd in the bush."

A poor professor in the hand, it would seem, is not too lowly for this siren's favors in default of worthier worshipers—or victims, as the case may be.

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"Private theatricals! Paint, patches, and powder!" cries Sir Christopher, with a groan. 'Don't have 'The School for Scandal,' Miss Vivash. I have played Charles Surface four times this season, and absolutely refuse to drink bumpers to the peerless Maria, or bring my ancestors to the hammer any more.”

"And I refuse all old women's parts," cries Lady Pamela, waking up in earnest. "Yes, Vivian, dearest, I refuse. I do them so well-efface myself so admirably-show such an artistic spirit, such want of vanity, in making up for the character.' Yes, I know-I hear your good-natured compliments beforehand; but I am modest, and refuse. I do not intend to have my head turned anent my incomparable old women any more."

"If I am positively wanted-behold me!" says Wolfgang. "How could I disobey any order given by Miss Vivash's lips? But I must ask to be cast for a walking gentleman, or 'Enter servant, with candles.' My Anglo-Saxon is not of a quality for airing in public. My B's and P's "—with a cutting glance at Jeanne—“ are altogether inadmissible for an English hero."

"Things look deliciously theatrical already," cries Vivian, still in high good humor. "Every actor discontented with his part even before his part is assigned to him. Sir Christopher Marlowe will delight no fresh audiences with his ge

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