accused
my father of coming direct from 'that person's' box. He replied that he
never forsook old friends. 'You should,' was her rejoinder. It suggested
to me an image of one of the sister Fates cutting a thread.

My heart sank when, from Lady Edbury too, I heard the allusion to Germany
and its princess. 'Some one told me she was dark?'

'Blonde,' my father corrected the report.

Lady Edbury 'thought it singular for a German woman of the Blood to be a
brunette. They had not much dark mixture among them, particularly in the
North. Her name? She had forgotten the name of the princess.'

My father repeated: 'The Princess Ottilia, Princess of
Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld.'

'Brunette, you say?'

'The purest blonde.'

'A complexion?'

'A complexion to dazzle the righteous!'

Lady Edbury threw a flying glance in a mirror: 'The unrighteous you leave
to us then?'

They bandied the weariful shuttlecock of gallantry. I bowed and fled. My
excuse was that I had seen Anna Penrhys in an upper tier of boxes, and I
made my way to her, doubting how I should be welcomed. 'The happy woman
is a German princess, we hear!' she set me shivering. Her welcome was
perfectly unreserved and friendly.

She asked the name of the lady whose box I had quitted, and after bending
her opera-glass on it for a moment, said, with a certain air of
satisfaction, 'She is young'; which led me to guess that Lady Edbury was
reputed to be Anna's successor; but why the latter should be flattered by
the former's youth was one of the mysteries for me then. Her aunt was
awakened from sleep by the mention of my name. 'Is the man here?' she
exclaimed, starting. Anna smiled, and talked to me of my father, saying,
that she was glad to see me at his right hand, for he had a hard battle
to fight. She spoke of him with affectionate interest in his fortunes; no
better proof of his generosity as well as hers could have been given me.
I promised her heartily I would not be guilty of letting our intimacy
drop, and handed the ladies down to the crush-room, where I saw my father
leading Lady Edbury to her carriage, much observed. Destrier, the young
marquis, coming in to meet the procession from other haunts, linked his
arm to his friend Witlington's, and said something in my hearing of old
'Duke Fitz,' which provoked, I fancied, signs of amusement equivalent to
tittering in a small ring of the select assembly. Lady Sampleman's
carriage was called. 'Another victim,' said a v