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Von Egmont's return for visiting her grave who sun's last beams fall round and yellow upon the lies below us there?" fir-stems. It seems to Jeanne in this palpitating light, this tremulous stillness, as though Nature herself held her breath.

"I chose because there was no joyfuller thing for me to do," is Jeanne's answer. "No one wants me in Schloss Egmont. I have no place in the merry-making. And my visit to Wendolin's Malva has done me good," she adds, with an effort. "It has reminded me that sorrowful lives come to an end, that even the weariest river '-you taught me that line once, sir; you were jealous, you said, that Heine had not written it-that even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to the sea.'

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Her deep eyes fill, the wild-rose color dies take Miss Vivash into my confidence. She showed from out her delicate cheeks.

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"Jeanne, my child," says Wolfgang, stealing his arm around the girl's slight shoulder, am not I your friend? Are you so changed by association with smart people, by stories of silks and scandals,' of court balls and Twickenham dinners, as to count my friendship for nothing?" Friendship," she repeats, with drooping lids, with lips over-ready to surrender. “Ah, Herr Wolfgang, if I could think, could believe-" Then the scene of which she was an unwilling witness at Badenweiler thrills through her brain; she turns upon him with an abrupt flash of indignation. "But you have not the right to speak to me like this. No, sir, you have not the right! You can not, honestly, be Miss Vivash's suitor one day, and the next-"

"I have never been Miss Vivash's suitor," interrupts Wolfgang firmly, "and never shall be while she and I inhabit the same planet. Through blind accident, a mischievous caprice of Paul von Egmont's sister, I have been thrown into Miss Vivash's society. I have not once forgotten, I hope, the distance that lies between us. As to being her suitor, Fräulein Jeanne, what could have put a notion so extravagant into your head?"

"Your own language and hers," answers Jeanne Dempster, unhesitatingly. "There shall be no more secrets, sir, between you and me. I will make full confession of the truth. The other night at Badenweiler, when you and Miss Vivash walked together under the veranda, I was there, hidden—and I heard all! It was scarcely my fault at first. You-you came upon me so suddenly I had not time to think about being honorable, and afterward I felt too miserable, too covered with shame, to show myself. Yes, and I heard all! Now, believe as badly of me as you choose."

Her head droops on her breast. She turns as though to leave him; but with kindly force Wolfgang's arm holds her close.

Ousel and goldhammer by now have piped themselves to rest; the wind sinks lower as the

a good-natured interest in my prospects, and our talk so shaped itself that I had no choice but to speak to her of my hopes-my hopes of winning Jeanne Dempster's heart. If you heard all, child, you must know that Miss Vivash's forecasts as to my fate were unfavorable. Was she right" (and the tremble of strong emotion is in Wolfgang's voice), "or was I?"

But Jeanne answers not. In thought she passes again through that hour's physical torture when she believed Wolfgang to be false. She sees the error into which blinded jealousy betrayed her; realizes, with rapture so keen as to be wellnigh pain, that she has not, has never had, a rival in his affection.

"If—if you care for me a very little, you have found a strange way, during the past week, of showing your regard, Herr Wolfgang."

"I might make a like remark, Miss Dempster. Oh, the lonely walks with Sir Christopher (that first walk, on the night of his arrival, not forgotten), the dances with Sir Christopher, the pretty speeches from Sir Christopher, that I have been forced to endure!"

She turns aside; the consciousness of a heart stirred by new instincts painting her face.

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May not Sir Christopher Marlowe have taken pity on me because he saw that I was neglected?"

"And is there not some English saying about pity being near akin to love?"

"As much love as Sir Christopher can give belongs to Lady Pamela Lawless!" cries Jeanne, with a deeper blush. It will be long before the scene under the dripping Badenweiler lime-trees ceases to occasion her some retrospective twinges of remorse. Whatever my sins have been in the past, they are punished, and by you, sir. Is not my name effaced from the theatricals ? Have you not refused to play Leoni to my Giulia?"

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The master takes her in his arms. During a few quick breaths he holds her close, as though pausing, with epicurean hesitation, on the brink of his own happiness. Then he kisses her.

"As we are making a clean confession," he says presently, "I had better let mine be complete. I am inveterately suspicious by temperament, jealous as a Spaniard—as well prepare you betimes for the future that is in store for you! I grudged that the eyes of a hundred strangers should see my little Jeanne, rouged, travestied, making equivocal love-speeches before the footlights. To women of the world, great ladies, reigning beauties, such an exhibition," says Wolfgang, comes in the natural order of things. For you I would have none of it-that much I determined on the evening when a certain simple heart first awoke to vanity, mein Fräulein, in the moment when I first saw a little figure I love, patched and powdered and painted, in Kit Marlowe's arms. The rest of us will go through our parts to admiration, untroubled, certainly, by any foolish diffidence, and you will put on your muslin frock and coral beads-yes, I will take no refusal about those coral beads-sit, Griseldafashion, in a corner, and listen to our plaudits."

"And not dance throughout the evening, of course, sir? Say 'No,' even if Count Paul should invite me to be his partner?"

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"Even if Count Paul should invite you!" repeats Wolfgang, with a smile, repressed, ere Jeanne has had time to suspect its import. Ay, there will be the crucial temptation. How, if Count Paul should offer himself-not as your partner in a waltz only? How if he should place Schloss Egmont and all belonging to it, Count Paul included, at your feet?"

"Schloss Egmont and all belonging to it will be offered to Miss Vivash," says Jeanne, not without a certain wistfulness. "Count Paul, we know, is a passionate worshiper of beauty, and I -although Mr. Wolfgang is good enough to care for me a little-I have red hair and freckles and thin arms, and might sit as a model, so says Miss Vivash, in the Great Art School of Ugliness. Do you suppose Count Paul would even look at me in her presence?"

"Hard to prognosticate. Paul von Egmont, like all his race, is of an unreliable, many-sided temperament. Although his artistic sense may have been led captive by a full-cut mouth, a sweep of throat (and such charms will pose for you in Rome, I am told, at five lire the hour), who shall say that the fellow is not true at heart to his boyish ideal, that he may not wish to take up his life and the best inspiration for art at the point where he was faithless to both more than a dozen years ago? Little Jeanne," says Wolfgang, earnestly, "would you have strength to withstand the temptation, did it arrive? On one side, a position, name, competence; on the other-"

neck; her dark eyes look up, with infinite tenderness in their depths, to his.

"For competence, for position, for all that Count Paul von Egmont has to offer, I care nothing. Miss Vivash may have them, freely. She can not take from me the only riches, the only happiness I desire to possess."

Her voice, her glance might set jealousy, even more inveterate than Wolfgang's, at rest.

CHAPTER XIX.

BEAUTY'S CROWNING TRIUMPH.

EIGHT o'clock has struck; the guests are assembled; the curtain is in readiness to rise. But the places of honor, in the foremost row of "stalls," remain unoccupied. Their High Transparencies, at the Residenz, have not even sent a gentleman-in-waiting to represent them. Paul von Egmont himself arrives not.

Miss Vivash, an ideally lovely (stage) Duchess, in paste brilliants, satins, rouge, is not at the smallest pains to dissemble her ill humor from her fellow actors. Coquettes have existed, in poets' brains, if nowhere else, who, on occasion, would pardon a man the injury they had wrought him. "Oft she rejects," wrote Pope of his Belinda, "but never once offends." From the ashes of each of Ninon's discarded lovers, we read, arose, phoenix-like, a friend! The type is obsolete. Modern beauty has her head too full of practical business interests to give heed to the finer niceties of generous sentiment. Pass beyond the stage of concrete admiration, the stage of bracelets, bouquets, and opera-tickets; escape with only a surface-wound or two, as Sir Christopher and Wolfgang have both escaped from Vivian's hands, and she will feel such bitterness toward you as only foiled vanity, frustrated greed of conquest, can, in a nature of a certain caliber, engender.

"If I could have foreseen that the thing was to end in a contemptible fiasco, I would have thrown up my part at the eleventh hour." (Thus the Goddess, angrily pacing up and down the boards of the extemporized green-room.) *Indeed, I am by no means certain I shall not do so now."

"And our audience?" expostulates Wolfgang. "The hundred and fifty spectators who, at this moment, await the rising of the curtain?"

"An audience of dowds and boors!" (The body of the saal is filled with Grafs, Gräfins, and barons-the whole collected High-well-borns of the district. The workmen and smaller bourgeois of St. Ulrich have, by Paul von Egmont's orders, But Jeanne's arms are round the master's been admitted to the music-gallery.) "Of course,

if one were in a first-rate troupe it would be different. Even before a set of country bumpkins one might act, for the pleasure of acting. But with such a cast as ours!"

"Thanks for the implied compliment," cries Sir Christopher, from the corner where he and Lady Pamela are contentedly rehearsing, or forestalling, their coming love-scenes. "The cakes are eaten, the ale is drunk, Miss Vivash. Still, I remember the day when you and I flattered ourselves on being two of the best amateur actors in London-or Leamington, which was it?"

The Beauty's pale eyes flash. It was in Leamington that Kit Marlowe, not one brief twelvemonth ago, received the blow that should have been his death-wound. And Kit Marlowe is heart-whole already-nay, if a certain radiant look on Lady Pamela's face speak true, is already far upon the road to another and a happier love. A thousand pities the cast was changed," she resumes. "Little Jeanne's classic pronunciation would have appealed, charmingly, in her final speech to the gods, our critics.

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"Oh, bray don't do anything for mich! Apove all, matam, don't get me a huspand.'"

So Miss Vivash imitates, or believes she imitates, the slightly German accents of Jeanne Dempster's voice. The color deepens on Wolfgang's face; but self-control is the habit of his life, and he keeps his temper to admiration.

"Brava, Miss Vivash, brava! If Paul von Egmont have inherited the family proclivities, he will be a lover of all things dramatic, a judge of histrionic talent. Be sure he will appreciate your powers of mimicry to the full !"

Even while Wolfgang speaks, the blast from a postilion's horn reëchoes through the avenue; the clang of horses' hoofs, the rattling of wheels, stir in the court below. A couple of minutes later comes the sound of footsteps passing the green-room; there is a creaking of hinges as the doors of the audience-saal are thrown open, and then-a hush! Paul von Egmont, if it be he, is welcomed to his father's house with more state than enthusiasm.

Lady Pamela and Vivian rush, with one accord, from the green-room across the stage.

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"A faded-looking lad with well-cut clothes, a military order on his breast, an inch and a half of brain, and eyelids." So exclaims Lady Pamela, peeping cautiously between the folds of the curtain. A couple of faded followers, all bows and scrapes, and yellow gloves and polished boots! Can this be the careless Bohemian, the prodigal son, the picturesque heir of all the Von Egmonts!"

"It is the young Prince, Ernest Waldemar," cries Vivian, an inflection of newly-awakened eagerness in her voice. "He must have heard

the people at the Residenz must have heard— that I vs to act. Don't you remember Mr. Chodd's wrath about him at the Derby? Prince Ernest was on Lord William Frederick's drag, and poor Samuel would not allow me- Oh" (breaking away from these reminiscences of the Chodd tragedy), "we must begin at once! now that his Highness is here, it would be in the worst possible taste to wait. Paul von Egmont desired, in his last telegram, that the curtain should rise punctually at eight, whether he arrived in time or not.-Am I rouged enough, my dear Pamela? Are you certain my left patch is in its proper place ?—Sir Christopher, you understand these things" (turning to her old lover with restored affability)-" is not my left patch the least fraction imaginable too low?"

She flies to one of the mirrors in the greenroom, and holding a taper on high, surveys the artificial snow and rose-bloom of her own face, eagerly. Sir Christopher Marlowe follows her.

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"On my faith as an Englishman. You must think poorly of my principles, Miss Vivash-you must consider me culpably light-minded, if you can suspect me even of a jest in such a matter!"

Well-cut clothes; a military order; an inch and a half of brain; and eyelids—a somewhat inadequate summing up, one would say, of any human creature possessing the normal amount of bone, muscle, nerve, and phosphorus. Still, considering the very small rôle Prince Ernest Waldemar has to play in the drama of Beauty's life, we may, perhaps, allow Lady Pamela's rapid silhouette to pass as a likeness!

Whatever intellectual qualifications accompany his clothes and his order, Ernest Waldemar, at least, is a prince; and, inspired by the delightful consciousness of quasi-royal presence, Vivian surpasses herself in the performance of her part. Above all, although she has to play down to the teaching-man from Freiburg, do the "scenes of love and jealousy" elicit applause from his Highness's delicately gloved, pearl-gray hands. Tender, by natural default, Vivian Vivish can not be, either before foot-lights or away from them. The mute, pathetic touches, the fine and subtile tints of emotion by which a character like Olympia's can be lifted out of the realms of commonplace, are wanting. In effective poses of limb and head, in alluring glances, in the sweep of a train, in the furl of a fan, in all the graces of such heroines as Offenbach's and Le Clerc's, the Hyde Park

Goddess need only remain herself, to be perfec- And the solid walls and towers of Schloss Egtion!

Prince Ernest Waldemar applauds long and frequently; the gentlemen of the Court who accompany him applaud; the audience, from the highest Hochwohlgeboren in the front seats, to the clock-makers and wood-merchants in the gallery, applaud-human nature, in this matter of following the leader, being much the same in the Black Forest as in nineteenth-century London. Scarcely in the palmiest days of her first season (those brief, enchanted days when, under Lord Vauxhall's guidance, she learned hourly to shape her lips to higher titles, when all the smart town ladies imitated the cut and color of her one provincial gown) did Vivian obtain a more genuine ovation than has befallen her now, a dethroned, scepterless queen, and an exile.

And still her triumph is incomplete! Just as in London there was ever one drawing-room into which the very highest bribery and corruption could not gain her admittance, one painter who sought not to immortalize her in his pictures, one editor whose columns were closed to the mention of her charms, so, to-night, one drop is wanting in the cup of her success. The craving heart of Vivian Vivash is dissatisfied; yes, even when, the performance over, she walks around the ballroom on Prince Ernest Waldemar's arm. One drop is wanting in the cup-Paul von Egmont is not here to swell the list of her worshipers !

Is she sure of him?

Poor Beauty has lost so many things within the last few weeks, has felt so much ground crumble away beneath her feet, that she is prepared for misadventure-prepared for every cruel transformation in that ficklest of all human possessions, man's favor! Sir Christopher, the most Quixotic once of lovers, consoled, and by her own familiar friend-Sir Christopher, who but for Will-o'-the-wisp visions of strawberry-leaves, would have given over his happiness, his honor, to her keeping Mr. Chodd's half million lost for the sake of a Twickenham dinner and of Lord Vauxhall! Even Wolfgang's valueless heart in the possession of little red-haired Jeanne !

How if Von Egmont's romantic worship should end-in a sketch for the next Munich Exhibition, or a copy, say, of impassioned German verses!-end in the clouds, as, alas! so much artistic admiration of the florid order has already done! Passing homages, ballroom compliments from a prince of royal blood, are sweet. Who knows the smarting sweetness thereof better than Vivian Vivash? But princes of royal blood, however æsthetic in their taste, must look for wives among kings' daughters. Their prettiest speeches are such stuff as dreams are made of. VOL. VII.-33

mont are realities. And she, the fairest woman the world has seen since the days of the Queen of Sheba, is six-and-twenty, and unwed!

"Et Monsieur Chodd?" asks the Prince, condescending to press the hand that rests upon his arm; "le pauvre Monsieur Chodd?" (or as his Highness pronounces the name, Jodd.) "Qu'est il devenu?"

"Mr. Chodd left London an eternity ago," says Vivian-"Mr. Chodd is making a lengthened tour in Lapland for his health.”

"He suffers, as you call it, vom heart comblaint?" asks his Highness.

Beauty laughs, but uneasily. The mention of her quondam suitor's name seems like an evil omen at this new turning-point of her ever-shifting career.

It stands in the evening's programme that the fiddlers, honest members of the St. Ulrich Philharmonic, shall begin their labors at ten. Already the band-master, hot and important, is at his post in the music-gallery; already a preliminary scraping of strings is warning old gentlemen to look for whist-tables, and young ones to look for partners-when Hans, his cheeks redder than the facings of his livery, makes his way toward the dais at the upper end of the dancingsaal. He whispers a hurried message to Mamselle Ange, at this moment doing the honors, in all the glory of her ribbons and flounces, to the Prince. Ere another minute passes, the news that Paul von Egmont has arrived begins to circulate with electric speed through the ballroom; and soon, from the avenue and gardens without, rises a shout, loud, prolonged, sonorous—a true Black Forest "Hoch!" to the like of which the gray old walls have not echoed since the day when the Countess Dolores was first brought home to the palatinate, a bride.

A thrill goes through every feminine breast in the assemblage-from the most venerable of the Fräuleins von Katzenellenbogen, down to little Jeanne in her confirmation frock and coral beads. Mamselle Ange, ludicrously irresolute, hovers suspended, like Mohammed's coffin, between the dais and the door. Her heart yearns to welcome Paul, the boy whose smile she would recognize among a thousand-yet will etiquette not suffer her to turn her back upon a prince of the reigning family, so long as that prince shall think fit, by word or look, to recognize the fact of her existence.

Just at this exciting juncture Sir Christopher Marlowe, still wearing the silks and laces of Cesario, crosses the ballroom to Jeanne. He is fanning himself daintily with his three-cornered velvet hat, a rose is in the button-hole of his azure

satin coat, a diamond snuff-box in his left hand. His powdered love-locks, his ruffles, rouge, and patches, become his accurately handsome face to a nicety. It would be hard, save on the canvas of Boucher or of Watteau, to find a more artistically perfect representation of the eighteenthcentury marquis than that presented by Kit Marlowe. (Possibly the historian of the future may pronounce the difference slight-one of degree, rather than kind—between the Victorian dandy and the frizé, painted petit-maître of the Regency.) Jeanne bethinks her of Wolfgang's Spartan indifference to fashion-books and tailors' shops-not without a certain sense of pride in the contrast.

"Will you give me the first waltz of the evening," he supplicates, with a bow that surely Lord Vauxhall could not surpass, "or has Donald been before me?"

The blush on Jeanne's cheek might rival an April sunrise over the Blauen.

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"If by Donald' you mean Mr. Wolfgang, you ought to know that he is engaged. On the evening you all arrived here, Miss Vivash promised to give him the first dance after the theatricals."

"And you think the promise will hold good, now that Von Egmont has arrived? Well, I, for one, have no false pride," cries Sir Christopher, drawing Jeanne's hand under his arm. "Although merit can not always win the race, perseverance may insure one's coming in a decent second, may it not?"

"I am not quite sure what you mean by 'second,' says Jeanne, with a glance in the direction of Lady Pamela.

seconds you would have the cruelty to throw me over?"

"The returned prodigal will dance with every noble lady present before he thinks of me— if indeed he thinks of me at all," says Jeanne evasively.

But her pulse, as she speaks, beats high; her eyes scan the crowds that line the entrance-hall with keenest interest. Her heart's whole love she has given to Wolfgang; she would quit Schloss Egmont, would start with him, glad sharer of his poverty, to the ends of the world, to-morrow! And still, to-night, she craves-passionately craves for a sight of Paul von Egmont. The master himself might pardon the infidelity. Through how many lonely bygone years has not Paul von Egmont's boyish face been her companion, her ideal, I had almost said the god of her idolatry?

A movement begins to vibrate through the crowd. The musicians play eight bars of the opening waltz. Prince Ernest Waldemar, with the stoutest, most noble married lady present, prepares to lead the ball. The gentlemen of the Court choose their partners and follow. And then, as the non-dancers clear away, Jeanne discovers-not Paul von Egmont, but Wolfgang, quietly standing beside Mamselle Ange, near the door, with Vivian on his arm.

The master is in evening dress; his head is held high; some subtile transformation seems to have come over his whole manner and person. He exchanges a word, a salutation, with all who pass him in the crowd. And Beauty smiles on him—not as once she smiled, but timidly, imploringly! Beauty hangs, with eager show of

Kit Marlowe's face becomes grave to edifica- interest, on his words. Beauty sighs, turns aside tion. her face, calls into action her whole artillery of well-used charms for his benefit!

"On se range," he observes in the melancholy tone of a man who has been married a dozen years. "Who shall say, in the present instance, through what agency? If it had not been for our dance in Badenweiler, my dear, for our wetting in the thunderstorm, our philosophie à deux under the lime-trees-"

"I should not have lost my voice and my share in the theatricals," cries Jeanne gayly. "I might have won as many laurels as the best of you. But it is too late now for regrets. No use, the Wald folks say, in mourning over a harvest that never was sown."

"Especially when one's present prospects are cloudy. Ah! little Jeanne" (in a sentimental whisper), "rivals gather round me fast. Against our particular Teuton I am forewarned, but not against a legion of Teutons-not against royal highnesses, barons, and counts! If the returned prodigal-if Paul von Egmont should invite you, suddenly, for this waltz, I wonder in how many

Can a Bond Street coat, a cambric cravat, a pair of lavender gloves have wrought this change, or is Miss Vivash tardily repentant? Does she remember, with compunction, how she strove for Wolfgang's heart, but to break it? Does she think of the letters she wrote her beloved princess, of the dust she wiped from the master's threadbare sleeve, of the bored hours spent in his society, while she longed, openly and without disguise, for Paul von Egmont's return ?

Jeanne's beating heart is in a tumult. She feels herself whirled round, amid an ocean of laces and tulles and satins, in Sir Christopher's arms. Mingling with her partner's whispered gallantries, she hears the rushing of flying footsteps. She sees the lights, the flowers, the garlanded walls, like one who dreams. Confused foreshadowings of some overwhelming surprise, some revolution in her fate, are upon her-vivid, despite their incoherency. Her cheeks suffuse;

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