exquisite taste, the prince begged her to take the matter in hand, so that nothing was done in the house of the future bride and bridegroom except by her orders. Her satisfaction while she was thus engaged was troubled only by a letter that she received from Paris in reply to that which she had addressed to her old comrade, Dumesnil.

Less reserved than his friend, the actor at the Odéon Theatre had written to her:

The old comedian continued his letter with a lamentation on the decadence of the theater, the want of taste in the public, and the isolation to which he was condemned. He concluded by charging his former mistress to kiss, for an old friend, her whom he might not kiss as a father.

The letter recalled to the Countess Barineff a crowd of disagreeable memories, and she rather regretted having written to Dumesnil, while she felt that it would have been difficult not to do so, for she had every reason to praise the conduct of this good fellow.

It was Dumesnil, in fact, who had guided the first steps of Madeleine Froment in her theatrical career, lifting her from the precarious and doubtful life to which the abandon of her relatives had consigned her before she was twenty years old. Having made her a mother, he had no thought of deserting her. On the contrary, he was anxious to acknowledge his child, when an unhoped-for engagement at St. Petersburg was proposed to Madeleine, who left Paris with the promise to obtain an engagement for Dumesnil too at the Michael Theatre. We know what happened. Sought after, courted, she soon forgot her comrade of the Odéon. Dumesnil did not know of her marriage with Count Barineff until it was too late to make any attempt at hindering it.

Mme. Froment touched adroitly the paternal fiber in Dumesnil's heart, and the good fellow, as we have seen, had let his child become the child of Count Barineff as much from affection as vanity. But all these deceptions had sharpened his temper. He had remained an actor through necessity rather than taste. Sad, discouraged, convinced that all was over in dramatic composition, and only feeling pleasures when the old stock pieces were in the bill, he played his parts in the dramas of the writers of the past with a strict regard for tradition.

However, notwithstanding the cloud that had formed in her azure sky, the Countess Barineff continued busying herself with the installation of the future couple. On the appointed day the mansion only lacked its master and mistress.

The two months' probation that Pierre Olsdorf had undergone had not lowered him in the estimation of his sweetheart. Certainly Lise did not feel her heart beat violently when the man whose name she was to bear kissed her hand, for this grave cavalier, with his slight fair mustache and half-closed blue eyes, was, perhaps, not the husband of whom she had caught glimpses in her dreams; but he would make a princess of her, and the Countess Barineff told her daughter that the happiest unions were often those which love had not preceded.

The ex-comedienne had made up her mind that the house of the young couple should become the liveliest place in the world. She would introduce her friends there; all the artistes that she loved to receive, all the foreigners who for years back had given her own house a deserved reputation for wit and elegance.

The last unconscious hesitations of Lise vanished on seeing the marriage present that the prince offered to her a few days before the ceremony. There was a fortune in jewels and furs, which were marvels, too, of good taste. Nevertheless, she slept that evening with her accustomed calm, and her last nights of maidenhood were troubled by none of the dreams that haunt the purest on the eve of the most important act of life.

So, too, on the next day but one, when she set out for the Church of Isaac, where the ceremony was to take place, she was as fresh and bright-looking, in her dress of white moiré covered with wonderful lace that had belonged to her husband's mother.

Her entry into the basilica, leaning on the arm of General Podoi, was an undoubted triumph. The middle-aged lover of the countess would not, for anything in the world, have delegated his right to lead to the altar, as her "father of honor," her whom more and more he regarded as his daughter. Lise, to gain the chair with armorial bearings that awaited her, had to pass through a friendly crowd made up of all the nobility of St. Petersburg. The frogged and decorated uniforms, the fine dresses, the diamonds and their beautiful wearers, were a dazzling sight.

The prince offered his arm to one of the greatest ladies of the court, the Princess Iwacheff, who acted as "mother of honor" to him, but was not a relative, as the custom usually requires.

Then came the Countess Barineff. Gratified as her pride was, she still wore a calm and dignified air. She might have been by right of birth of the world into one of the first ranks of which her daughter was entering.

The emperor was represented by one of his aides-de-camp. The arch-priest himself officiated, and when the daughter of the actor Dumesnil had become a princess, she received with perfect good-breeding the compliments of those who defiled before her.

A few hours later a princely dinner was served to more than a hundred guests at Pierre Olsdorf's mansion. Next day the Princess Lise entered on the noble life for which she had been so long under preparation.

The prince had intended to quit the city for Pampeln immediately after his marriage; but the season was far advanced, the winter was coming on rapidly, and the Countess Barineff pointed out that he ought not to deprive his young wife of the entertainments to which she would be invited in St. Petersburg, in order to shut her up in a château at a season of the year when it must necessarily be lonely.

Pierre, as much out of deference to his mother-in-law as from affection for Lise—of whom he seemed very fond—put off the departure for his estate until the following spring. His house—as the countess had promised herself it should—soon became one of the most brilliant in St. Petersburg.

The fact was not altogether pleasing to the prince. He had never cared much for the world, and he would rather have had his wife more for himself alone; but he gave way with a good grace, and balls and receptions succeeded each other at his house throughout the first six months of his marriage. The Princess Olsdorf had her box at the Michael Theatre and at the Italian opera; she was to be seen at all the court balls; no sledge was horsed like hers; the greatest ladies of the Russian nobility became her friends; she was famed in all the gossip of the day for her elegance, wit, and beauty.

As for the prince, he was always rather too grave. He was away only once during all this bustling six months, and that was in order to pay a short visit to Courland that he might see for himself that Pampeln would be worthy to receive its mistress in the spring.

Pierre Olsdorf loved his wife; but with his serious character, and the temperament of a man born in northern latitudes, he knew nothing of trouble and fierce passions. It seemed, too, that it was well he was not otherwise, for Lise was still the woman General Podoi had described her as—gentle, amiable, free from