u did not your devoir is my affliction.
Where lingers chivalry, she should have proceeded, if not with my
knight? I feast on your regrets. I would not have you less than
miserable: and I fear the reason is, that I am not so very, very sure
you will be so at all or very hugely, as I would command it of you for
just time enough to see that change over your eyebrows I know so well.

'If you had seen a certain Henrietta yesterday you would have the
picture of how you ought to look. The admiral was heard welcoming a
new arrival--you can hear him. She ran down the stairs quicker than any
cascade of this district, she would have made a bet with Livia that
it could be no one else--her hand was out, before she was aware of the
difference it was locked in Lord F.'s!

'Let the guilty absent suffer for causing such a betrayal of
disappointment. I must be avenged! But if indeed you are unhappy and
would like to chide the innocent, I am full of compassion for the poor
gentleman inheriting my legitimate feelings of wrath, and beg merely
that he will not pour them out on me with pen and paper, but from his
lips and eyes.

'Time pressing, I chatter no more. The destination is Livia's beloved
Baden. We rest a night in the city of Mozart, a night at Munich, a night
at Stuttgart. Baden will detain my cousin full a week. She has Captain
Abrane and Sir Meeson Corby in attendance--her long shadow and her
short: both devoted to Lord F., to win her smile, and how he drives
them! The captain has been paraded on the promenade, to the stupefaction
of the foreigner. Princes, counts, generals, diplomats passed under him
in awe. I am told that he is called St. Christopher.

'Why do we go thus hastily?--my friend, this letter has to be concealed.
I know some one who sees in the dark.

'Think no harm of Livia. She is bent upon my worldly advantage, and that
is plain even to the person rejecting it. How much more so must it be to
papa, though he likes you, and when you are near him would perhaps, in
a fit of unworldliness, be almost as reckless as the creature he
calls madcap and would rather call countess. No! sooner with a
Will-o'-the-wisp, my friend. Who could ever know where the man was when
he himself never knows where he is. He is the wind that bloweth as it
listeth--because it is without an aim or always with a new one. And am I
the one to direct him? I need direction. My lord and sovereign must fix
my mind. I am volatile, earthly, not to be