sband to let me write about it. I soon had an answer from Eugen. How
he laughed at me! He had paid a lot of debts for the girl, which had
been pressing heavily upon her since her career began; now he said he
trusted she would get along swimmingly; he was going to her benefit that
night.

"But when he was at ----, and when he was about six-and-twenty, he
really did get engaged to be married. He wrote and told us about it.
That was the first bitter blow: she was an Italian girl of respectable
but by no means noble family--he was always a dreadful radical in such
matters. She was a governess in the house of one of his friends in ----.

"We did everything we could think of to divert him from it. It was
useless. He married her, but he did not become less extravagant. She did
not help him to become steady, I must say. She liked gayety and
admiration, and he liked her to be worshiped. He indulged her
frightfully. He played--he would play so dreadfully.

"We had his wife over to see us, and he came with her. We were agreeably
surprised. She quite won our hearts. She was very beautiful and very
charming--had rather a pretty voice, though nothing much. We forgave all
his misconduct, and my husband talked to him and implored him to amend.
He said he would. Mere promises! It was so easy to him to make promises.

"That poor young wife! Instead of pitying him for having made a
_mesalliance_, we know now that it was she who was to be pitied for
having fallen into the hands of such a black-hearted, false man."

The lady paused. The recital evidently cost her some pain and some
emotion. She went on:

"She was expecting her confinement. They returned to ----, where we also
had a house, and we went with them. Vittoria shortly afterward gave
birth to a son. That was in our house. My husband would have it so. That
son was to reconcile all and make everything straight. At that time
Eugen must have been in some anxiety: he had been betting heavily on the
English Derby. We did not know that, nor why he had gone to England. At
last it came out that he was simply ruined. My husband was dreadfully
cut up. I was very unhappy--so unhappy that I was ill and confined to my
room.

"My husband left town for a few days to come over to Rothenfels on
business. Eugen was scarcely ever in the house. I thought it was our
reproachful faces that he did not wish to see. Then my husband came
back. He was more cheerful. He had been thinking things over, he