turned
to the window to conceal her shame and sorrow together.

"It was this very morning," muttered Dalton, angrily, "when I spoke of
giving a little dinner-party, you did nothing but turn up your nose at
this, that, and t' other. There was nobody good enough, forsooth! There
was Monsieur Ratteau, the 'croupier' of the tables there, a very nice
man, with elegant manners and the finest shirt-studs ever I seen, and
you would n't hear of him."'

Nelly heard little of this reproachful speech, for, sunk in the recess
of the window, she was following with her eyes the retiring figure of
Adolf Brawer. He had just crossed the "Plate," and ere he turned into
a side street he stopped, wheeled round, and made a gesture of farewell
towards the spot where, unseen by him, Nelly was still standing.

"He is gone!" muttered she, half aloud.

"Well, God speed him!" rejoined Dalton, testily. "I never could abide a
pedler."

CHAPTER VI. MADAME DE HEIDENDORF

Kate Dalton's was a heavy heart as, seated beside her new friend, she
whirled along the road to Vienna. The scenery possessed every attraction
of historic interest and beauty. The season was the glorious one of an
Italian spring. There were ancient cities, whose very names were
like spells to memory. There were the spots of earth that Genius has
consecrated to immortality. There were the scenes where Poetry caught
its inspiration, and around which, even yet, the mind-created images of
fancy seem to linger, all to interest, charm, and amuse her, and yet she
passed them without pleasure, almost without notice.

The splendid equipage in which she travelled, the hundred appliances of
ease and luxury around her, the obsequious, almost servile devotion of
her attendants, recalled but one stern fact,--that she had sold
herself for all these things; that for them she had bartered her warm
affections,--her love of father and sister and brother,--the ties of
home and of kindred, even to the Faith at whose altar she had bent her
knees in infancy. She had given all for greatness.

In all her castle-buildings of a future, her own family bad formed
figures in the picture. To render her poor father happy; to surround his
old age with the comforts he pined after; to open to dear Nelly sources
of enjoyment in the pursuit she loved; to afford Frank the means of
associating with his comrades of rank, to mix in that society for which
he longed,--these were her objects, and for them she wa