n Chabert was taken for one in Vevey. She, cold and
designing as she was, blushed slightly when he stood before her for the
first time; and when he gave her his arm, he could feel her hand
tremble slightly on it. The same evening they went out riding together,
the next he was lying at her feet, and on the third she was his. For
four weeks the lovely Wanda and the Brazilian lived together as if they
had been in Paradise, but he could not deceive her searching eyes any
longer.

Her sharp and practiced eye had already discovered in him that
indefinable something which makes a man appear a suspicious character.
Any other woman would have been pained and horrified at such a
discovery, but she found the strange consolation in it that her
handsome adorer promised also to become a very interesting object for
pursuit, and so she began systematically to watch the man who lay
unsuspectingly at her feet.

She soon found out that he was no conspirator; but she asked herself in
vain whether she was to look for a common swindler, an impudent
adventurer, or perhaps even a criminal in him. The day that she had
foreseen soon came; the Brazilian's banker "unaccountably" had omitted
to send him any money, and so he borrowed some of her. "So he is a male
courtesan," she said to herself. The handsome man soon required money
again, and she lent it to him again. Then at last he left suddenly and
nobody knew where he had gone to; only this much, that he had left
Vevey as the companion of an old but wealthy Wallachian lady. So this
time clever Wanda was duped.

A year afterward she met the Brazilian unexpectedly at Lucca, with an
insipid-looking, light-haired, thin Englishwoman on his arm. Wanda
stood still and looked at him steadily, but he glanced at her quite
indifferently; he did not choose to know her again.

The next morning, however, his valet brought her a letter from him,
which contained the amount of his debt in Italian hundred-lire notes,
accompanied by a very cool excuse. Wanda was satisfied, but she wished
to find out who the lady was, in whose company she constantly saw Don
Escovedo.

"Don Escovedo."

An Austrian count, who had a loud and silly laugh, said:

"Who has saddled you with that yarn? The lady is Lady Nitingsdale, and
his name is Romanesco."

"Romanesco?"

"Yes, he is a rich Boyar from Moldavia, where he has extensive estates."

Romanesco ran a faro bank in his apartments, and certainly cheated, for
he nearl