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eyes. And Jeanne's heart sickens. In this moment it is given her to taste of the tree of mundane knowledge, and, with a cold chill, she realizes that its flavor is bitter, exceedingly.

"Let us waltz, of course," she cries impetuously—“waltz, like other civilized people, or walk about, or sit down. Why in the world, Sir Christopher, are we making ourselves so ridiculous ?"

They waltz-they waltz to perfection. Can Jeanne help it that, though her spirit be heavy, her step is buoyant? Her peasant hat is slung across her arm, the Raphael red hair hangs loose and shining round her throat. A light, whose fountain source a less vain man than Sir Christopher might fail to guess at, is in her dark, imploring eyes.

ing them. 'Tis a taste, like that for olives or caviare, no doubt, that wants education. Still, Miss Dempster, I am sorry for your Herr Wolfgang. Whatever his sins of priggishness, or otherwise, the Teuton is too good for the evil quarter of an hour that lies before him."

"My Herr Wolfgang!" repeats Jeanne passionately. "Say Miss Vivash's Herr Wolfgang -anybody's Herr Wolfgang, rather than mine!"

"Ach, ist dass so? I have progressed, you see, in German, as well as in other accomplishments, since I came to Schloss Egmont. Miss Vivash's Herr Wolfgang, then, as you prefer the phrase, has an evil quarter of an hour in store for him. Let Miss Vivash's Herr Wolfgang take care of himself. You and I, little Jeanne, for our part, will burn our wings and our fingers just as badly as we choose!"

Jeanne answers not; and her companion—no greater coxcomb, probably, than his peers-regards her silence as an expression of consciousness. Sir Christopher's own heart begins to grow Poor Jeanne, with her big dark eyes, her blushes, her dimples-she really is a charming little girl, red hair, doubtful English, and freckles notwithstanding. At any rate she is not a Beauty

soft.

"If Badenweiler were at the antipodes, 'twould be worth the journey to have one such dance," he whispers, when the fiddling dies into silence. "It is not waltzing, as we in London know the word 'tis music turned into motion. A man as old as Methuselah, as gouty as the Duke of Beaujolais, would have life put into him by such a partner. Yes, Miss Dempster, a couple of turns with you would put fire into a stone." As he indulges in this bold and original trope, a positive charm to a man who, like Kit Marthey pass out of the ballroom into the Erkerweg, a trellised wooden veranda, overgrown with japonica, sweet-brier, and passion-flower that runs round two thirds of the Kursaal building. Wolfgang and Vivian, slowly pacing, side by side, in the warm, hushed darkness, come across them.

"What are those vain regrets that you are indulging in, Sir Christopher?" cries Miss Vivash, looking sharply back at him across her shoulder. "Methuselah-the Duke of Beaujolais ! Will experience never bring you beyond that first volume of the romance?"

"On the contrary, one has a foolish fancy for studying a new romance altogether," says Kit Marlowe readily; "a romance likely to leave one for a change after too much of Zola and Daudet-with a good taste in one's mouth. And you?"

"We are spectators," says Wolfgang, before Vivian can reply-" spectators looking on with quiet curiosity, while moths burn their wings, and children" (he gives a momentary glance at Jeanne's flushed cheek) "their fingers."

Sir Christopher shakes his head gravely as the pair continue their walk; the master talking low and earnestly, as though his theme moved him—Miss Vivash listening with bent-down face, with an air, real or admirably dissembled, of half reluctant submission.

"I have not had overmuch experience of philosophers, personally," he observes. "And as yet, I can not say I have got to the stage of lik

lowe, has fallen madly in love with a Beauty reputation once, and outlived his madness!

Within thirty steps of the Kursaal is a lime avenue, fragrant, though no longer crowned with the nectared sweetness of its bee-haunted July prime. Thither Sir Christopher leads his partner. No perceptible breath of wind stirs upon the earth's face; but high among the trees little soft airs must be stirring, for you can hear the shivering of light boughs, the kissing of the leaves overhead. Flowers, shrubs, grass, send forth the pungent odor that prophesies on a sultry summer night of rain. The sky is low-hanging, black; only the lamps hung at uncertain intervals, along the garden pathways, enable one to see one's way.

Jeanne is blinded somewhat, after the ballroom's brilliant light, it may be from some other foolish cause; and her foot slips. Sir Christopher saves her from falling; at the same time he gets possession of her hand, holds it tenderly for a moment or two, then draws it through his arm.

"And ye sall walk in silk attire,
And siller ha'e to spare "-

So he sings with theatrical attitude and spirit ;
the long perspective of avenue, the lamplit
slips," the distant Kursaal fiddles, heightening
the dramatic effect of the scene-

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"Gin ye'll consent to be his bride,
Nor think of Donald mair."

Sir Christopher's voice is not without a certain canary-like sweetness; yet does its quality fit it rather for music-hall burlesque or nigger melody than for pathetic ballad. And Jeanne begins to laugh.

Laughter and tears both lie nearer to the surface with her to-night than is their wont.

“Yes, I should like to have it out about that 'some one,'" says Sir Christopher, harking back to their ballroom conversation. "Your ambition, I believe, is bounded by five hundred a year pin-money, unlimited opportunities of going into debt-"

"And every two months a bonus in the shape of jewelry. The last few days have taught me the weighty influence of bracelets on human happiness. Don't forget the jewelry."

"It shall be put in the settlements, if you like. I can not speak fairer than that. Miss Dempster, when is it to be?"

He has an intention, Jeanne divines, of again taking possession of her hand! She snatches it quickly from his arm, and, turning aside, buries her face amid the blooming odorous masses of a honeysuckle that overhangs the path. A horrible suspicion that Sir Christopher thinks her in earnest makes her flush hot with shame.

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"If by settlements' you mean when you shall remember me in your will, sir, you may set about it as speedily as you like. Considering you are just ten years my senior, I shall be tolerably advanced in life before I come into my inheritance."

"Oh, wha would buy a silken gown Wi' a puir broken heart?" "Jeanne," cries Sir Christopher fervently, "are you crying? No! I could have sworn I heard a sob. Jeanne, don't walk so quick," for all this time she has been getting on steadily ahead, "and confess the truth. Is your gentle heart melting?"

He overtakes her; ere Jeanne has time to suspect, or contravene his design, steals his arm around her waist.

66

Is your heart melting?" he repeats. "Does the thought of pin-money touch you? Speak; I can bear anything but suspense."

"If I could have the pin-money without incumbrances," she observed, "you would not have long to wait for my answer."

"Meanwhile, my dear?"

"Meanwhile, Sir Christopher Marlowe, I think it would be quite as nice if you were to leave off speaking affectionately, and, please, could we not manage to walk farther apart? Surely, the path is broad enough for us both?”

But Jeanne's opinions are not those of Sir Christopher Marlowe. He does not leave off

speaking affectionately. Although the path is broad, they do not walk any farther apart.

"You have seen my character on one side only." So, after a little space, he begins again. "Naturally and logically you think me a fool." "I do not, indeed," cries the girl, consciencestricken. "On the contrary, I think in many things-oh, ever so many things—you are”she stammers, casting about her for a word"are very clever."

"A clever fool! You are trying to let me down as easily as you can. I thank you for the intention. A fool, gifted enough, like Dundreary, to ask a widdle, forgetting the answer; to sing a mild comic song (music-hall and water); whistle a waltz; lead a cotillon; and, generally, go through whatever monkey-tricks may, as a professional funny man, be required of me by society. Yes, Jeanne, I am all this. I am something more. If a sweet, simple little girl gave me her love, I believe I am not such a fool but that I could keep it—ay, and wear it worthily.”

The sharpest pang of remorse she has ever known stabs Jeanne's heart. A big lump rises in her throat. In another moment, unless she takes care what she is about, she will infallibly have promised to become Kit Marlowe's wife.

"And ye sall walk in silk attire."

"Unfortunately, you have been defectively educated. You do not care for silk attire, or siller, either. The question is-Donald. Is there a Donald in the case, Jeanne? You have only to tell me so, and I withdraw. If she be not made for me, what care I,' et cetera. Is there a Donald?"

"I felt a drop of rain on my nose," answers Jeanne, vainly trying to escape from him. “One, two-we shall have a thunderstorm! Ange and Hans both predicted it when we started, and none of us brought our waterproofs."

"Rain, or no rain, I intend that you shall give me an answer. Is there" (putting the question slowly and syllabically) "a Donald ?"

"I don't know what you mean!" she exclaims, growing frightened. "Who is Donald? We have no people of that name in the Schwarzwald, and I think I would like to go back to the ballroom, if you please. It is raining in earnest, and Ange will not give me another hat before Michaelmas."

Sir Christopher moves a couple of steps away from her.

"You are a child," he remarks, somewhat coolly, "but you are old enough to know that what I say now is no joke. Oh, there is no rain to hurt. You can stay here long enough to give me an answer, without spoiling your ribbons. As you will not speak about third persons, as

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"You, who always take my part, who never laugh at me-no, for even that first dreadful day at dinner, you laughed good-naturedly. And the time passes so quickly when we are together, and-"

"And we match in height! And our step, when we waltz. Janet, I say it without vanity, you will never find any fellow, even among your beloved Germans, whose step suits you half as well as mine. Will you have me?”

Even as he speaks, comes a lightning-flash, accompanied, rather than followed, by a very artillery of thunder; and then the rain, hot, deluging rain, the specialty of the Black Forest climate, begins to rush down in sheets. Jeanne and Sir Christopher creep under shelter of a limetree, somewhat more thickly spreading than its fellows, and with the big drops falling in ever increasing volume on their heads, proceed with their "love-scene."

"Will you have me?" repeats Sir Christopher, and pretty loudly; the rolling of the thunder, the incessant splashing of the rain, put amative whispers out of the question.

"I wish I could have an umbrella," says Jeanne, with a wretched attempt at a laugh. "An umbrella and a waterproof would be more to the point than silk attire just at present."

"We are not talking of silk attire; and coquetry, let me tell you, child, does not sit well on you. Come! There is no time to lose. A set of ribbons might not matter, but I will not ask you to catch a cold for my sake. Yes or no, Janet ?"

The light from a neighboring lamp gleams fitfully upon them at this juncture. Jeanne catches a glimpse of Kit Marlowe's roseate, dapper, most unlover-like face, and takes cour

age.

"Yes or no? As if there could be any doubt as to my answer! Yes, of course, a hundred times, yes. You are rich, Sir Christopher, and a Hochwohlgeboren. Could I be ignorant enough to say 'no' to a Herr Baron? I, a pauper with one mark a week-that is the allowance Ange makes me, sir—and to find myself in gloves, collars, neckties, and the pastor's plate on Sundays."

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"And be your housekeeper, a new edition of Ange, with account-books that won't come straight, blue cap-ribbons, and flounces. Well, yes; if the place is not already more suitably filled," says Jeanne, with significance, "I promise."

"What do you mean by more suitably filled?" cries Sir Christopher in a suddenly sobered voice.

“I mean-oh, I mean just what I say, sir," she answers innocently. "When your cousin, Lady Pamela, marries again, as in the common course of things she will, and you are left alone in the world, why, naturally, you will want a housekeeper, me or somebody else, to take care of you."

Sir Christopher Marlowe's face could not under any circumstances be tragic; but at this suggestion of little Jeanne's, his expression turns black as the clouds above them. At no point of their love-scene, such love-scene as it was, did he look half so moved.

"My cousin, Lady Pamela, has a vast deal too much nous to take a second husband-after such an experience as her first! And if she did, it would make no difference in our relations. Lady Pamela and I have grown up together, have quarreled, kissed and quarreled, like brother and sister, all our lives."

"Then of course, sir, if a second marriage was for Lady Pamela's happiness, her brother would not say nay?"

"Lady Pamela has a vast deal too much nous to take a second husband," repeats Sir Christopher, the subject evidently not supplying him with any large stock of original ideas.

"At any rate," observes Jeanne, "you have my promise. When Lady Pamela is-amusing herself somewhere, in the world, as there must be no talk of a second marriage-and when you are old, prosy, gouty, and want a housekeeper, I will come to you."

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"If you and Donald chance to have discovered, meanwhile, that you are not each other's affinities.'"

"How often must I tell you that I never in my life knew any one called Donald?"

Jeanne turns from him pettishly, then launches boldly forth into the rain.

"And how am I to know that Donald is not High Dutch for Wolfgang?" asks Sir Christopher, following in her steps. "Jeanne, my dear, "There must be a Donald in the case," says I believe, after all this, we shall both die and

VOL. VII.-32

worms eat us, but 'twill be from a pleurisy, take drear moment, on Jeanne's memory. The pinkmy word for it, not from love!"

They skirt as best they may under shelter of the lindens while shelter lasts. Then comes an open gravel space which must be taken by assault, and then, blinded, dripping, with sentiment blown and scattered to the winds, they find themselves under cover of the Kursaal veranda.

The venetians of the windows are up. Jeanne looks in she sees, strikingly contrasted with her own wet, disheveled condition, the beauties of the ballroom, pink, blue, and green, as they whirl round in the arms of spurred and epauleted partners. Lady Pamela and her Faust remain faithful to each other. Vivian is waltzing.

For an instant's space Jeanne does not recognize the Beauty's partner. She catches glimpses only of the training Derby white, of an upheld snowy wrist, a gleaming bracelet. An instant's space! Then an opening in the crowd brings the faces of both dancers full before her. Vivian's partner is Wolfgang.

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THE waltz, ere long, changes to a mazurka; but Vivian and the master continue partners. Under pretext of reassuring Lady Pamela as to her safety, Jeanne has dispatched Sir Christopher into the ballroom; and, sick in spirit, chilled, wretched in the flesh, she stands alone, screened from observation by the darkness, an outside watcher of the scene.

The sleek head of Beauty reposes on Wolfgang's shoulder-an attitude, let me say, not in vogue among the wives and daughters of the Fatherland. His whispers make her smile as they glide round in swift, smooth unison with the music, the two the most noticeable pair of dancers in the room. Lady Pamela, cruelly abandoning her Faust, has taken pity on Kit Marlowe. The many-colored Fräuleins and their warriors gyrate merrily. Flute, violin, and bassoon play their loudest.

What cares the herd for the shorn lamb? What matters it to fifty or sixty wildly-spinning human creatures that one forlorn child should be breaking her jealous heart in the rain and darkness of the night?

All the sorrows, all the losses she has known during her little span of life crowd back, in this

cheeked doll-her first great anguish-who was fondly hushed to sleep in an August sun, and who "woke," a ghastly heap of wax, blonde wig, sawdust, and eyes! The wounded robin she nursed so tenderly, and who obstinately declined either to sing songs in his cage or to recover! The tortoise-shell cats, a long-doomed race, who used to vanish, generation after generation, by violence or treachery from her arms! What is life, she thinks, attaining in a leap to Solomon's philosophy, but loss? Loving passionately today that which shall be empty air to-morrow, and discerning meaning neither in our love nor in our loss?

A fear, the ghost of a suspicion, rather, flashes across her that in the last half hour she has acted like a fool; honestly, it may be, according to the notions she once had of such matters, but like a fool-has taken happiness (or what might have passed very decently well for happiness) between her two hands, and wantonly thrown it -as a child disappointed of the moon throws its toy-away from her.

Sir Christopher Marlowe is young, accomplished, likable; better than all, Sir Christopher Marlowe is rich. When Jeanne first heard Lady Pamela discourse of high-stepping horses, Paris milliners, good dinners, well-looking partners, she remembers that she listened with a kind of envy; felt that in herself were as keen capabilities for pleasure as in any Lady Pamela, any Hyde Park goddess of them all. As Sir Christopher Marlowe's wife, whatever else were piteously wanting, these things, at least, had lain to her hand. For the sake of what vain dream has she rejected them-her master's love, perhaps, her master's fidelity!

Jeanne Dempster has not far to seek, she has not long to wait, ere that question be practically answered.

A covered pathway, or veranda, extends, as I have said, round two thirds of the Kursaal. On the north side, where Jeanne stands, this veranda is sheltered; the newly-risen southwest wind bearing away the rain as it descends from the steep, tiled roof above, in sheets. The air is sweet with the thousand odors that the silent chemistry of summer rain distills from thirsty, grateful earth. It has grown cool, almost keen; and when the mazurka is finished a score or so of men and girls come forth to enjoy the freshness of the night—perhaps to exchange a little whispered sentiment beyond the watchful ken of chaperon or of rival.

Two of the number linger longer than the rest, Wolfgang and his partner. At first Jeanne feels secure from observation, expecting at every moment to see them reënter the ballroom with

the crowd. Presently, Miss Vivash, it would seem, taking the initiative, they extend their walk along the more dimly lighted portions of the veranda. They approach nearer and nearer, and Jeanne's breath comes thick. Hemmed in on all sides but one by storm and darkness, what choice has she left but to hide herself? A thickly trellised screen of ivy shuts off the veranda from the garden at two or three yards' distance, and behind this, her heart beating loud and fast, she creeps.

Miss Vivash and Wolfgang stop short. She can see their faces distinctly; with morbid acuteness, born of jealousy, every faculty concentrated on one sense, can hear each word they utter more clearly than she ever heard human speech at any prior moment of her life.

"Yes," observes Beauty, in her lowest, languidest tones, evidently in reply to some remark of Wolfgang's. "Jeanne is, no doubt-er-diverting, in her way, quite a curiosity-ah-for those who appreciate the kind of thing! I don't know that I have much taste for unearthly, Topsy-like children, myself. Time, perhaps, and experience, may give the creature feeling. I remember being told by a celebrated author at a dinner-you can understand the celebrities all trying to get next me-that the one gift a writer might attain by practice was originality, just what the crowd and Dogberry would say comes by nature. It may be the same with heart."

How differently Vivian talks with no member of her own sex near! Her mind seems to have taken up new thoughts, her very voice to have acquired new modulations.

"Whatever Jeanne's faults may be, I should certainly not reckon want of heart among them," says the master.

"No? Well, with your discernment of character you are pretty certain to be right. (And I fear you are awfully discerning. Mr. Wolfgang! I often tell Lady Pamela I could not keep a secret hid from you.) Besides, you know Jeanne so very much better than I do. And I'm sure" (with a sigh) “one should be charitable, when one remembers one's own failings. Naturally, at her age, the enjoyment of the moment, the love of change and attention are everything. It requires an education to teach one to suffer! Yes, and to go through that teaching thoroughly, to learn how to feel, and at the same time to know the madness of feeling, a life of the world, such as mine, is needed!"

She rests her elbows on the balustrade of the veranda; then lightly bows down her cheek on her clasped hands. The attitude is charmingly photographic; well considered, well executed. It brings every best point of Vivian's face into relief. It brings Vivian herself, through a quick,

scarcely perceptible change of position, a foot or so nearer to the master.

Jeanne bethinks her of her own plainness. Convulsively clasping a fold of her drenched skirt within her hands, she realizes the contrast that exists at this moment between her rival and herself: Vivian in her shining white silk (that does duty, like some clap-trap sentiments, for fresh, by lamp-light); with her fair, calm face, her trained low voice, her self-command-and she, Jeanne, rough, ill-dressed, graceless, with her heart on fire, with her cheeks, at no time alabaster, burning under the mingled influence of rain, wretchedness, and tears!

Happily she is well hidden out of sight, and likely to remain so. The night continues dark as Erebus. The lovers, if lovers they be, are too thoroughly engrossed in themselves, and in their own hopes and fears, to pay attention to shadows.

"No man knows where his neighbor's shoe pinches," says Wolfgang, somewhat skeptically. "Judging only from the surface of things, I should not say that suffering and Miss Vivash had made intimate acquaintance. Has there been one crumpled rose-leaf, half a one-❞

"In the velvet-piled couch fate has given me to repose on?" Vivian interrupts; and, lifting her face, she gives him a very full gaze, then hastily turns away. "Even in your life, Mr. Wolfgang, even in the wilds of Germany, you may have heard" (actually there is an approach to a blush upon her cheek) "that I am—or was, for, if my friends say true, my reign is over-that unfortunate product of civilization called by the loungers at London club-doors, 'A Beauty'?"

"It is a fact to be divined, a story that needs no telling," says Wolfgang gallantly, yet with a certain coldness in his voice. "A man who has eyes to see, and a heart to feel, needs not the verdict of St. James's Street to confirm his taste."

"St. James's Street ?" cries Miss Vivash, lifting up her head, and rapidly making good her retreat from the debatable land of sentiment. "Oh! You know more of London, then, than we have given you credit for, Mr. Wolfgang?"

"I know most of the world's capitals, from the outside," he replies. "My business calls me to London yearly, a very different business, a very different London, to anything that comes within the experience of Miss Vivash."

"London is London. You must mix in some kind of society," she persists. "You must see the Exhibition surely, go to the theatres, read the papers? Whatever your occupation, if you have been in town during the last two seasons, you can scarcely have failed, one would think, to know my face?"

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