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not fitting, sir. The last train passed St. Ulrich at eight. When you missed that train you must have known your only alternative was to walk. Jeanne, come in.”

The girl obeys, lingeringly. At the same moment Wolfgang makes a strategic backward movement that enables him to plant one foot within the threshold of Schloss Egmont.

"I must throw myself on your compassion, Mamselle Ange," he remarks boldly. "For tonight, such fraction of night as remains between this and dawn, I ask your hospitality."

"Mr. Wolfgang-sir! the servants have gone to rest-every habitable room in the Schloss is full." A look of absolute ludicrous terror is on Ange's face, the lamp in her hand trembles. "I have been here over thirty years," she goes on in a hollow voice, "and I never was placed in such a false position yet. You can walk down to St. Ulrich, surely? Make your way to the Bahnhof, knock up the station people-"

"And be taken for an escaped socialist," interrupts the master, "rewarded with a revolvershot for my pains. In these days of fraternal equality one does not care to run risks toward the small hours of the morning."

Ange's cheeks turn green. She is a woman deeply read in police history, and on the instant (so she afterward makes confession) the heroes of a dozen stories of midnight violence rise, redhanded, before her vision. What does she know of this soi-disant master, or of his antecedents? Who should answer for his intentions? What were the occupants of the Schloss-a handful of women, a servant-lad, a London dandy-if it came to a conflict with a band of annihilist desperadoes, armed to the teeth?

"My best Mamselle Ange," says Wolfgang, in the tone of easy command that, despite his sordid surroundings, so well becomes him, "I respect your scruples. You are the guardian of Schloss Egmont, and you shrink, naturally, from affording shelter at midnight to questionable characters."

been the protector of Schloss Egmont). The dog crouches and licks it.

"And still, Jeanne, still, I mistrust the man," says Ange, when a few minutes later her lantern is feebly piercing the gloom of an upper staircase; Wolfgang safely imprisoned, according to his own suggestion, in the oak study. "Turk's instinct? Oh, half the robberies going are brought about through the connivance of housedogs. Mr. Wolfgang is not what he seems! Even Frau Pastor Meyer-and she has traveled about the world-I won't talk of her breeding, but she is a pious woman, versed in the depravity of our fallen nature-even the Frau Pastor noticed the fineness of his linen. What should a Latin master do with cambric fronts? Why, his laundress's bill alone must eat up half his earnings. Take my word for it, child, when Count Paul returns, Mr. Wolfgang's day will be over. There will not be room for them both under the roof of Schloss Egmont."

At which prophecy Jeanne Dempster holds her peace.

CHAPTER XI.

A HEART.

HEROES," says the proverb, "are not heroes to their valets." Goddesses, if one may generalize from a solitary example, are in no wise goddesses to their female friends.

In other classes, other manners. Had Vivian been born, as Beauties used to be, in the purple of notoriety, she might have bowed more gracefully to her honors, have submitted with finer self-respect to her dethronement. Beauty, at one time, was a good deal a matter of family connection. There were certain houses in which a complexion, a throat, a line of feature, were held to be hereditary. The future "toast" knew over what kingdom she should hold sway before she left the nursery; was trained to rule, rather than

"To questionable characters!" repeats Jeanne conquer, in the schoolroom-grew accustomed Dempster indignantly.

"But it is possible for you to perform an act of charity with circumspection. Put me in Paul's study. By locking a couple of inner doors you can shut me completely off from the rest of the house. I shall depart through the window by daybreak, and the only thing I could possibly carry away with me would be young Von Egmont's portrait."

Ange has no choice but to consent. Wolfgang assists in barring the front door. As they pass the bottom of the staircase he holds out his hand to Turk the mastiff (gray and toothless now, but who for more than a dozen years has

to bear a crown, even before her slender shoulders were adequate to the weight.

Vivian is a usurper. Partly by accident, partly by sheer self-assertion, not a little-so froward is the æsthetic taste of over-civilized manthrough the fact that she is not beautiful, has she won her perilous way to greatness whereunto she was not born; and her success, of its very nature, has hardened, vulgarized her.

She was elected a beauty-ah, that bitter past tense!-by so powerful a clique, had backers in places so high, that mothers the most watchful, wives the most circumspect, were forced to inscribe her on their visiting list. "An outsider, a

photograph celebrity-the talk of the clubs-the Folly of the moment "-these, and other harder names, the members of her own sex who loved her not might bestow upon Lord Vauxhall's Invention. They could not, dared not, while her star was still in the ascendant, exclude her from their houses.

From their houses-no. But is there any law, written or unwritten, forbidding a hostess to chill as she courtesies, to stab as she smiles?

Patricia may be forced to admit the Folly of the moment to her ballroom, yet will make that Folly feel, as only Patricias can, over what kind of volcano her satin-slippered plebeian feet trip so lightly.

What exquisite slights, what finished, wellbred insults must not poor Beauty have submitted to from women, even before the slackening homage of men warned her that the hour of her downfall drew near! How bitterly and oft must she have counted up the gains, the losses, that celebrity had cost her! What visions must have darkened her pillow of the future, hourly becoming more certain, when the fiat of humiliation should have gone forth, and another Lord Vauxhall have invented another Vivian, or another batch of Vivians-is not imitation the Nemesis of notoriety?-for the admiration of the town!

Miss Vivash's success, I repeat, of its very nature, has hardened, vulgarized her. It has done more. It has taken away every wholesome, simple taste of life from her feverish palate. Lady Pamela Lawless, butterfly though she be, has a thousand ways, more or less wise, of massacring time. Lady Pamela is a good walker, a not unintelligent observer of men and things, finds genuine pleasure in every kind of outdoor sport -even in the Kegelbahn! Lady Pamela, ere four-and-twenty hours go by, has settled down with perfect resignation to her fortnight's dose of Schloss Egmont-and the society of Sir Christopher Marlowe.

To poor Beauty all is barren from Dan to Beersheba; the world, in very truth, a doll stuffed with straw, save where the complexion, the slaves, the parasols, the bonnets of Vivian Vivash are concerned.

She detests all that the country yields with a detestation worthy of Miss Kilmansegg. Her ankles are too weak for these horrible hilly walks that surround Schloss Egmont. The smell of the pine-forests is like a benzone-lamp, reminds her of cleaned gloves, of village tea-parties. She is convinced the sun, should she rashly venture in it, would bring on an apoplexy. During the season she was strong enough to waltz for four or five hours every night of her life; to pass her mornings on the historic walking gray, in the Row; to spend her afternoons in shopping or

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"A first favorite had better be pensioned off at the end of one season." Thus Vivian, with a bitter laugh. Three months is long enough for such a reign. I ought to have had smallpox, or have died, or married, a twelvemonth ago."

"You would, in that case, have possessed exactly a twelvemonth's less bracelets, my dear," answers Lady Pamela calmly.

Bracelets! Listening to the two friends, as they discuss this ever-fresh theme, one would think that human life, with all its complex measure of joy and pain, could be computed by jewelry.

Ovid, wise with the wisdom of his generation, remarks that certain Roman ladies had birthdays as often as it suited them. Martial, in an epigram, reproaches Silva with celebrating eight of these festivities yearly. A modern London beauty, in the matter of presents, if in nothing else, throws the ladies of old Rome into the shade. Quite coolly, Jeanne and Mamselle Ange listening, will Vivian talk of the diamond ring sent her by Prince This, or the pearl and ruby bracelet presented to her by the Duke of That. Her horse, her ridinghabit, the opera-tickets, the yachting tours of Lady Pamela and herself, have been obtained free of cost. 'Doubtful," so the Beauty playfully declares, “if we have paid our own grocers' bills." As for Mr. Chodd-his gifts, not returned, it would seem, at the rupture of the engagement, must have been legion. Trinkets, silks, laces, all the costliest items in Vivian's possession are spoken of as Samuel's choice, Samuel's fairing, dear good Samuel's latest peaceoffering, u. s. W. If he was thus amenable to reason as a suitor, what might not consistently have been hoped from Mr. Chodd as a husband!

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The loss of her quondam lover occasions Vivian more fond regret than a surface observer

might give her credit for. On the third morning after the London visitors' arrival, Jeanne, stopping before the open door of the improvised "boudoir," discovers poor Beauty in tears; such innocuous tears as may on occasion give safe relief to temper, yet not endanger one's eyelashes or mar one's complexion. It is an art, a science in itself, this knowing how and when to weep.

Everything in the outdoor world is joyous today. A brisk north wind, with a refreshing sense of coming autumn in its breath, stirs among the forests; the sun shines with godlike fervor on the distant Blauen tops; he shines, with purple sweetness, in the hearts of Mamselle Ange's roses. The burn trills out a never-ending song without words as it runs onward, onward, over its bed of moss and stone, toward the Rhine.

But all is tuneless, sunless, to Beauty. She sits at her writing-table—in a morning-wrapper all too ravishing to be described by this homely historian-a jeweled pen (whose gift? Jeanne wonders) between her fingers, a monogrammed sheet of note-paper outspread before her. All is tuneless, sunless, to Miss Vivash. The post has brought her the weekly socials, once the harbingers, the bulwarks of her reputation, and Vivian sees the world through smoke-colored spectacles.

A new Beauty has been invented. Hence these tears! "Metistophiles," "The Star and Garter Gazette," and other such chameleon-like journals of society sing pæans in the new Beauty's favor. What antidote can be offered by July sunshine, by forest, stream, or garden, to shaft so poisoned as this?

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"It is monstrous, the work of a cabal," Miss Vivash exclaims, inviting Jeanne, by a glance, to enter, and pushing aside her writing materials with irritation. 'And to think that I should have been betrayed by this turncoat, time-serving 'Metistophiles !'" taking up a paper from the heap that lies beside her. "One, two, threeyes, I have had three copies sent me by different dear, good-natured friends, afraid, each of them, lest the vile scandal should not reach me fast enough. A new Beauty, indeed! As if Beauties, like mushrooms, could spring up in a night!"

She turns the pages impatiently; then, in a voice that quivers with genuine feeling, begins to read the vile scandal aloud. It is a panegyric, foreign to this story, upon some freshly imported dark-eyed American, "The Boston Rose," whose charms and whose millinery have been the delight of Goodwood. Every detail respecting the lady's dress, manner, speech, and luncheon is given with delightful outspokenness; indeed, little Jeanne, in her ignorance, can scarce decide whether the racehorses, the jockeys, the three

card men, or the reigning beauties are the most familiarly criticised. The Rose's parasol was expressly manufactured for her use in Lyonsits device, knots of her emblematic flower, with the initials B. R. on a white-moiré ground. Her bouquet was presented to her, with exquisite grace, on the course, by Lord Vauxhall. No less a personage than his Serene Transparency, Prince Ludwig of Szczakowa, was plateholder while the Beauty picked her chicken-bones and consumed her lobster-salad.

"Although mobbed at every turn," concludes the paragraph, "the roughs crying 'That's her! that's her!' royalty eying her through operaglasses, a jealous herd of mothers and daughters criticising her every movement as she walked down the course upon her husband's arm, the Boston Rose wore her honors with the quiet unconsciousness that already distinguishes her. Enthusiastic artists and poets declare that such a nose and lips have never before been seen out of marble. In sober prose we may state that no such living goddess, 'ripe and real, worth all the beauties of your stone ideal,' has graced Goodwood during the past dozen years, at least."

"It is written by their own sub-editor," cries Vivian, throwing the paper from her with disgust. "It is the work of Stokes! Could I mistake his style? Did Stokes not give me scores of such notices, did he not give me a leader every second week, until I refused to get him an invitation to Strawberry House? No such goddess seen at Goodwood for a dozen years!' And only last July-twelve short months ago—"

She turns abruptly to the glass; she analyzes the reflection it gives her back. Alas! and at this moment lines are on her forehead, hardness is round her lips. It takes no great stretch of prophetic vision to predict what Vivian Vivash will be in half another decade.

"I am not growing old," so she cries harshly, and more as though she apostrophized Fate than addressed her companion. "I have not changed 'tis impossible I should have changed, and me not eight-and-twenty yet!"

Be not over-critical, reader! Can you expect the most beautiful woman the world has seen for four hundred years to be grammatical?

"And this notice in The Star and Garter'!" taking up another paper, out of whose sheets drops a lithographed sketch-a short-lipped, high-nosed, drooping-shouldered gem of the aristocracy. "To think that a miserable pennya-liner, a man whom we used to have to dinner out of pity, dares, because I am alone and unprotected, to write of me like this!—

"The success of our deposed queen was, from first to last, a success of esteem. Thanks to a smile, a pair of shoulders, a friendly artist,

and a momentary stagnation in the beauty mart, she awoke one morning, like Lord Byron, to find herself famous. That the descent of the stick has been quick as the uprising of the rocket can surprise no one. The whilom divinity of our smoking-rooms, the V. V. of our breast-pins and pipe-bowls, had not, in plain English, and as the intelligent foreigner told us from the first, a feature in her face.'

"And I wish that I were dead-no, I wish Lord Vauxhall were dead, here at my feet!" The light that lies in Beauty's eyes is not a pleasant one. "But for him and his Twickenham dinners-dinners given to ladies of position to-day, to Mademoiselle Sara, from the circus, to-morrow-I should not have angered the one man who loved me."

A look of real emotion sweeps across Vivian's face. Wound the vanity of a woman of her mold, and, in nine cases out of ten, she will unaffectedly believe 'tis her heart that suffers.

ment.

"

“... I should be rich, I should have the world on my side still. During a season and a half, who dared leave me out of anything? I went to all the ambassadors' houses, I used to sit next the prime minister at dinner. If members of reigning families came to London on a visit, I was asked to meet them. My name appeared, as a matter of course, at the concerts and garden parties-and when the Court went in mourning I wore black. If I had marriedyes, if I had married even a shoddy Mecœnas -let us not ask how Beauty pronounces the word!" I should be in high places at this moThe American creature is married. To get on in such a horrid, intriguing world, a poor helpless woman wants a protector. Thank Heaven, Jeanne," this with trenchant bitterness, "that you are out of reach of temptation. Thank Heaven, on bended knee, for your homely looks. There was a time," moans Beauty, "when I thought I would rather die than be ugly-yes, and I have said so openly, no matter what fine ladies with plain faces were listening. I had best change my opinions now. To be dowdy and virtuous, to have this hideous Black Forest for a background, to count the spoons, to chronicle the small beer of Schloss Egmont will be my fate, I doubt not, and I-oh, I shall have to bear it, yet neither commit murder nor suicide, if I can!"

And motioning to Jeanne to quit her, Miss Vivash, with a dreary yawn, returns to her letterwriting. Without betrayal of confidence, may we not glance across her shoulder and read?

"SCHLOSS EGMONT IN BADEN.

"MY VERY DEAREST PRINCESS: All that you told me of your old home falls short of the mark. Schloss Egmont is simply too charming.

Till now I never knew how little I care for the dingy parks, the hot and glaring streets of London. The forests are pretty to a degree, exactly the fashionable shade of deep bluish green that is so becoming-you must remember the dress I wore at Lady Flora Walgrave's breakfast? At present I have not got beyond the dear romantic old garden. The fish-ponds, and juniper-hedges, and things do make one feel so à la Watteau! It seems a sin to have no aspirant R. A., brush in hand, to paint one. Yesterday I took afternoon tea, merely from artistic sentiment, beside a broken dial on the western terrace, and consoled my solitude by thinking how often you and Count Paul must have played there when you were children. I wore an enchanting tea gown of printed washing silk, on a cream ground over blue, the silk made en sacque, with cascade of Auvergne lace, folds of Indian muslin (fitting the figure exquisitely), and a cap the same shade, of Pompadour satin. It seems to me, though I have only seen your brother with the eyes of the spirit, that I know him better than any of the throng I used to dance and ride with in London. How much more really flattering is his delicate homage than all the noisy fulsome praises of the crowd! -But you must promise never to betray me— never to let him suspect that I wrote thus! Alas! I am too romantic, it is the fault of my character. If my heart had been worldly, I should be in a very different position at this moment, as you know.

"Mamselle Ange, the housekeeper, a quite too delicious old oddity, received a telegram from Count Paul this morning, and we are to expect his coming next Saturday. Lady Pamela and Sir Christopher wish to get up theatricals for the evening of his arrival, and I have been persuaded into saying yes. Had my taste been consulted, I would far sooner have met for the first time in the delightful quietness of the country, the budding woods around, the primroses blossoming, the song of the nightingale, or of whatever bird it is that sings at this season of the year, overhead! But poor dear Pamela is as frivolous as ever, and Sir Christopher—

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"Ah, my friend, conscience, I confess, pricks me sorely when I look at Sir Christopher Marlowe, and think what manner of man he might have become had Fate been kinder to him. But 'tis folly to remember.' Sir Christopher has an ancient name, an unincumbered estate, and I am a lowly born country girl, raised by accident (as some one says, 'Can you help being perfectly beautiful any more than being perfectly clever, or a perfect fool?') out of the ranks. Yes, dearest Salome, though the great ones of the earth have taken me up, I never forget my station, or theirs. But I have A Heart! Any woman who marries

--

without love, according to my code, commits a crime. And so Sir Christopher knows that I am unchangeable, and tries to pretend, poor thing, that he is consoled. Sometimes the fear haunts me that he will turn desperate-at a certain miserable time, don't you remember hearing how wildly he played at loo and baccarat ? and marry Lady Pamela Lawless. Heaven forbid it! Although I can give nothing warmer, the poor little fellow has all my friendship, and I would not see a man I care for marry a milliner's block. A milliner's block, too, without beauty, though no one living underrates pink and white charms, and worships intellect more than me.

"As I have spoken of theatricals, you will ask about our dramatis persona. Oh, what a falling off is here and when one remembers my success with Lady Clearwell's Incomparables, every place gone three weeks beforehand, and stalls got for the Portuguese princes only through the very highest influence! But I have drunk the Cup of Eclat to the dregs-my ambition now is a fireside, domestic joy, affection-and I rate such vanities at their true worth. Ma très chère, we have got, in addition to the three chief actors that you know, the housekeeper's adopted daughter, little Jeanne. The child is plain to piquancy; her lank locks, lean cheeks, and 'intense' expression would fit her for a model in the art school of ugliness. We have also got-tell it not in Gath, whisper it not in May Fair-a certain Herr Wolfgang, Jeanne's arithmetic master, to take the part of jeune premier. The poor man is awkward and uncomfortable, as might be expected from a person in his position; still, as he can speak English decently, one was obliged to enlist him or give up the idea of theatricals. You can imagine, with what you used to call my patrician proclivities, that Herr Wolfgang's society must be rather a trial to me. However, I think nothing of myself. All I wish is to insure a brilliant home-coming to the brother of my friend.

"I gather from Mamselle Ange's talk that Count Paul's tastes are admirably simple. In his boyhood he met with some romantic adventure, it seems, that for years has made him shun the world. (Like the hero in that talented novel we read together, don't you remember, the freethinking Life Guardsman, with fifty thousand a year, and blonde whiskers, who took to wandering about Europe, the curse of Cain on his brow, and singing Anacreontic songs in the cafés!) Oh, are not these tastes mine? A country life, a moderate fortune, enough and only enough of London to give zest to the remaining five months of the year! One's friends about one, a little quiet yachting, perhaps, in autumn-ah, dearest friend, will these placid delights of existence ever be mine, or

"I send a thousand diplomatic good wishes to ce cher Prince, and I am my Salome's devotedly attached-VIVIAN."

"Have you heard of this American parvenue, whom the newspapers are absurdly trying to write into celebrity? I saw her at the Opera before I left town, a little lean doll, with wideopen, foolish eyes, the manners of a schoolgirl, and a husband who, they say, is a first-rate pistol-shot, and will not allow his wife's photograph to be sold in the shops. My dear, she can come to no good.

These barbarous marital virtues might do in California-do for one of the heroes in Bret Harte's novels. They will never pave the way to success in nineteenth-century Lon

don."

CHAPTER XII.

FIRST REHEARSALS.

PAUL VON EGMONT'S return is fixed for Saturday. The actors have five days yet before them for the erection of their stage, for the organization of their footlights, for their scenery, properties, programmes, rehearsals, and quarrels.

Quarrets? Who that takes a part in amateur theatricals but must echo the sentiments of quaint old proverb-writer Le Clerq? "J'adore les proverbes." So he makes one of his own stage personages declare. "C'est la plus belle invention. C'est la source de mille tracassaries. Aussitôt qu'on les introduit dans une maison on est assuré de jouir de toutes les divisions, de toutes les zizanies, les médisances, les calomnies, qui règnent ordinairement parmi les acteurs de profession."

"Unless the cast is revised, I owe it to my own self-respect to withdraw from the piece," says Miss Vivash, with uplifted profile. "My recollections of dearest Blanche Plantagenet, of Lord William Frederick de Vesey-such high breeding, such talent—”

"Unless I may stick to Cesario, I act nothing," cries Lady Pamela, stoutly determined. "I have ordered my Hessians to be sent over from London, and unless I can bring them in, like Mr. Crummler's pump, I strike."

"Ladies," interposes Ange, in despair, “remember my larder! self-respect, high breeding, Hessians! I have ordered twenty pair of chickens from France, I have ordered pies from Strasburg, and salmon from Geneva. And there is thunder in the air!"

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