he more
prosperous members of the bourgeoisie, a great deal of pedestrianism
went forward. Our friends passed out into this well lighted promenade,
and Felix noticed a great many more pretty girls and called his sister's
attention to them. This latter measure, however, was superfluous; for
the Baroness had inspected, narrowly, these charming young ladies.

"I feel an intimate conviction that our cousins are like that," said
Felix.

The Baroness hoped so, but this is not what she said. "They are very
pretty," she said, "but they are mere little girls. Where are the
women--the women of thirty?"

"Of thirty-three, do you mean?" her brother was going to ask; for he
understood often both what she said and what she did not say. But he
only exclaimed upon the beauty of the sunset, while the Baroness, who
had come to seek her fortune, reflected that it would certainly be well
for her if the persons against whom she might need to measure herself
should all be mere little girls. The sunset was superb; they stopped
to look at it; Felix declared that he had never seen such a gorgeous
mixture of colors. The Baroness also thought it splendid; and she was
perhaps the more easily pleased from the fact that while she stood there
she was conscious of much admiring observation on the part of various
nice-looking people who passed that way, and to whom a distinguished,
strikingly-dressed woman with a foreign air, exclaiming upon the
beauties of nature on a Boston street corner in the French tongue,
could not be an object of indifference. Eugenia's spirits rose. She
surrendered herself to a certain tranquil gayety. If she had come to
seek her fortune, it seemed to her that her fortune would be easy to
find. There was a promise of it in the gorgeous purity of the western
sky; there was an intimation in the mild, unimpertinent gaze of the
passers of a certain natural facility in things.

"You will not go back to Silberstadt, eh?" asked Felix.

"Not to-morrow," said the Baroness.

"Nor write to the Reigning Prince?"

"I shall write to him that they evidently know nothing about him over
here."

"He will not believe you," said the young man. "I advise you to let him
alone."

Felix himself continued to be in high good humor. Brought up among
ancient customs and in picturesque cities, he yet found plenty of local
color in the little Puritan metropolis. That evening, after dinner, he
told his sister that he should go forth early on the