ther. That was how I
became acquainted with her. She was very beautiful--almost as beautiful
as you, Miss Wedderburn, and I, dull and plain myself, have a keen
appreciation of beauty and of the gentleness which does not always
accompany it. When I first knew her she was lonely and strange, and I
tried to befriend her. I soon began to learn what a singular mixture of
sordid worldliness and vacant weak-mindedness dwelt behind her fair
face. She wrote to me often, for she was one of the persons who must
have some one to whom to relate their 'triumphs' and conquests, and I
suppose I was the only person she could get to listen to her.

"At that time--the time you called at our house, _gnaedige Frau_--her
epistles were decidedly tedious. What sense she had--there was never too
much of it--was completely eclipsed. At last came the announcement that
her noble and gallant Uhlan had proposed, and been accepted--naturally.
She told me what he was, and his possessions and prospects; his chief
merit in her eyes appeared to be that he would let her do anything she
liked, and release her from the drudgery of teaching, for which she
never had the least affinity. She hated children. She never on any
occasion hinted that she loved him very much.

"In due time the marriage, as you all know, came off. She almost dropped
me then, but never completely so; I suppose she had that instinct which
stupid people often have as to the sort of people who may be of use to
them some time. I received no invitations to her house. She used
awkwardly to apologize for the negligence sometimes, and say she was so
busy, and it would be no compliment to me to ask me to meet all those
stupid people of whom the house was always full.

"That did not trouble me much, though I loved her none the better for
it. She had become more a study to me now than anything I really cared
for. Occasionally I used to go and see her, in the morning, before she
had left her room; and once, and once only, I met her husband in the
corridor. He was hastening away to his duty, and scarcely saw me as he
hurried past. Of course I knew him by sight as well as possible. Who did
not? Occasionally she came to me to recount her triumphs and make me
jealous. She did not wish to reign supreme in her husband's heart; she
wished idle men to pay her compliments. Everybody in ---- knew of the
extravagance of that household, and the reckless, neck-or-nothing habits
of its master. People were indi