elder daughter, who was for some years a fanatical adherent of her mother's doctrines, lately married an artillery-officer. Stella, the younger sister, whose acquaintance you are to make, dislikes having a brother-in-law in the artillery. The Baroness's distaste was not for the quality of her son-in-law, but for marriage itself. She appeared at the wedding in deep mourning, and but for the remonstrances of her relatives the invitations to the ceremony would have been engraved upon black-edged paper, like notices of a funeral."

"Ah! And the second daughter,--hm--I mean the one expected here?"

"She will not hear of marriage, and is studying for the stage."

"Indeed?" said Baron Rohritz.

The general moved a little nearer him, and, with a mischievous twinkle of his green eyes, whispered, "Between ourselves, I would not trust any girl under sixty--he-he-he!--in the matter of marriage. This Stella is hardly an exception; she probably imagines she can make a very good match from the stage--he-he!"

Rohritz shrugged his shoulders.

Stasy continued: "I really am sorry for Stella: under other circumstances she might have been very nice, but as it is she is dreadful. Two years ago she had a craze for horsemanship: she used to tear about for hours every day upon an English blood-horse which she had bought for a mere song because it was blind of one eye. Since the Meineck finances did not, of course, warrant a groom, and the Meineck arrogance could not accept the attendance of any one of the young men of the place,--and I know from the best authority that several kindly offered themselves as her escort,--she rode alone, and in a habit--good heavens!--patched up by herself out of an old blue cloth sofa-covering,--just fancy! One day the Baroness was more than commonly in need of money, perhaps to publish a new volume of history or to repair a tumble-down chimney,--who knows?--at all events the horse was sold to a farmer in the neighbourhood. Stella cried for a week over her loss. Now the horse is quite blind, and draws an ash-cart; and when the little goose sees him she kisses his forehead."

"Ah! besoin d'aimer!" chuckled the general. "Hm--hm!"

"Three times a week she goes to Prague, of course without any chaperon,--and takes singing-lessons from a long-haired music-master who predicts for her a career like Alboni's. Heaven knows what will be the end of it. The Meineck temperament is sure sooner or later to show itself in the child. Her father's mode of life scandalized even his comrades, and her aunt----surely you know about Eugenie von Meineck, the captain's old flame----"

She stopped short, for at this moment the captain himself entered the room, and, turning to Rohritz, said, "I'm glad, old fellow, that your stay in Erlach Court is to be brightened up a little."

"I assure you that no change is needed to make my visit to you most agreeable," Rohritz rejoined, courteously.

The captain bowed: "Nevertheless you cannot deny that your pleasure may be increased, and you are still young enough to enjoy the society of a pretty and clever girl."

Rohritz bit his lip; he had a very decided, although quite excusable, dislike for what are called clever young women. Stasy turned up her nose.

"Do you think the little Meineck clever--mais vraiment clever, spirituelle?" she asked.

"She is full of bright, merry ideas, and what a pretty girl says is apt to sound well," the captain replied, dryly.

"Do you think her pretty?" Stasy drawled; she never could make up her mind to call any girl pretty.

"Pretty? She is charming, bewitching!" the captain declared, in an angry crescendo.

Just then his wife appeared, much provoked at some particularly shocking misdeed on the part of the maid to whom had been intrusted the arrangement of the guest-chambers, and she asked, "What is the matter?"

"A difference of opinion with regard to your niece Stella, Katrine dear," Anastasia said, sweetly, leaning back with a languishing air among the cushions of her arm-chair and touching her fingertips together. "Your husband thinks her so very beautiful."

"Oh, my husband always exaggerates," Frau von Leskjewitsch remarks.

"I never said very beautiful; I did not even say beautiful: I simply said charming," the captain shouts.

"She is pretty. There is something very attractive about her," his wife assents, "and my husband finds her especially charming because she looks like his old flame, Eugenie Meineck. For my part, this resemblance is the only thing about Stella that I do not like. I am sorry that even in her features alone she should remind one of her aunt."

"A rather indelicate allusion on your part," growls the captain, whose brown cheeks had flushed at his wife's words.

As his wife always declared, he had never got out of roundabouts, which suited him but ill, for he was an unusually tall, broad-shouldered man, with very handsome, clear-cut features, and a face tanned and worn by war, wind and weather, but recognizable as far as it could be seen as that of a southern Slav.

"Extremely indelicate," he repeats, with emphasis.

"I think it ridiculous never to outlive disappointments," says Frau von Leskjewitsch, who ever since she was a girl of eighteen had assumed the air of a matron of vast worldly experience,--"extremely ridiculous," she adds, with comic mimicry of her husband's reproachful intonation. As she spoke she slightly threw back her head crowned with luxuriant hair gathered into a simple knot behind, half closed her eyes, and stuck one thumb in the buff leather belt that confined her dark-blue linen blouse at the waist. Baron Rohritz, an experienced connoisseur of the female sex, had stuck his eye-glass in his eye, and was gazing at her without a shadow of impertinent obtrusiveness, but with very evident interest. Without being handsome, or taking the slightest pains to appear so, she nevertheless produced a most agreeable impression. According to the Baron's computation, she was about thirty-four years old, and yet her tall slender figure had all the pliancy of early youth. Her every motion was characterized by a certain energy and determination that possessed an attraction in spite of being foreign to the generally received opinion as to what constitutes feminine grace. The eyes, shadowed by long black lashes, that looked forth from her pale, oval face were full of intelligence and constantly varying expression, her features were fine but not regular, and her laugh was charming.

"Yes," she repeated, "I insist upon it, there is nothing more ridiculous than the inability to have done with one's disappointments. Good heavens! I freely confess to myself, and to the world at large, that the worthy man with whom I was wretchedly in love for four years was one of the vainest, most insignificant, most egotistical and uninteresting geese that ever lived."

"You were not in love with him," declared the captain, who did not seem to be quite free from a certain retrospective jealousy. "You were simply under the domination of an idée fixe."

"As if the passion of love were ever anything save an idée fixe of the heart!" retorted Frau von Leskjewitsch; "and an idée fixe is a disease; while it lasts it is well to be patient with it, but when it is over one ought to thank God and get rid of the traces of it as quickly as possible. That you never did, Jack: you were always like the belles of society, who cannot make up their minds to burn up their old ball-dresses and other trophies or simply to throw them away. They stuff their trunks full of such