of Great Britain was never less ably represented
(that is saying a great deal) than it was on this occasion by the young
man reared to diplomacy and aspiring to Parliamentary distinction.
He answered all questions with a constrained voice and an insipid
smile,--all questions pointedly addressed to him as to what
demonstrations of admiring sympathy with the gallantry of France
might be expected from the English Government and people; what his
acquaintance with the German races led him to suppose would be the
effect on the Southern States of the first defeat of the Prussians;
whether the man called Moltke was not a mere strategist on paper, a
crotchety pedant; whether, if Belgium became so enamoured of the glories
of France as to solicit fusion with her people, England would have a
right to offer any objection,&c., &c. I do not think that during that
festival Graham once thought one-millionth so much about the fates of
Prussia and France as he did think, "Why is that girl so changed to me?
Merciful heaven! is she lost to my life?"

By training, by habit, even by passion, the man was a genuine
politician, cosmopolitan as well as patriotic, accustomed to consider
what effect every vibration in that balance of European power, which
no deep thinker can despise, must have on the destinies of civilised
humanity, and on those of the nation to which he belongs. But are
there not moments in life when the human heart suddenly narrows the
circumference to which its emotions are extended? As the ebb of a tide,
it retreats from the shores it had covered on its flow, drawing on with
contracted waves the treasure-trove it has selected to hoard amid its
deeps.

CHAPTER II.

On quitting the dining-room, the Duchesse de Tarascon said to her host,
on whose arm she was leaning, "Of course you and I must go with the
stream. But is not all the fine talk that has passed to-day at your
table, and in which we too have joined, a sort of hypocrisy? I may say
this to you; I would say it to no other."

"And I say to you, Madame la Duchesse, that which I would say to no
other. Thinking over it as I sit alone, I find myself making a 'terrible
hazard;' but when I go abroad and become infected by the general
enthusiasm, I pluck up gaiety of spirit, and whisper to myself, 'True,
but it may be an enormous gain.' To get the left bank of the Rhine is
a trifle; but to check in our next neighbour a growth which a few years
hence would overtop us,--