"Well," said she, after a pause, "you are counting over the days we have
passed, or are still to pass here?"

"No, not _that!_"

"You are computing, perhaps, one by one, all your fashionable
friends who would be shocked by my levity--that 's the phrase, I
believe,--meaning those outspoken impertinences you encourage me to
utter about everything and everybody!"

"Far from it. I was--"

"Oh! of course, you were charmed," broke she in; "and so you ought to
be, when one performs so dangerous a trick to amuse you. The audience
always applauds the rope-dancer that perils his neck; and you 'd be
worse than ungrateful not to screen me when I 'm satirized. But it may
relieve somewhat the load of obligation when I say that I utter these
things just to please myself. I bear the world no ill-will, it is true;
but I 'm very fond of laughing at it."

"In the name and on behalf of that respectable community, let me return
you my thanks," said he, bowing.

"Remember," said she, "how little I really know of what I ridicule, and
so let my ignorance atone for my ill-nature; and now, to come back, what
was it that you were counting so patiently on your fingers? Not _my_
faults, I'm certain, or you'd have had both hands."

"I'm afraid I could scarcely tell you," said he, "though somehow I
feel that if I knew you a very little longer, I could tell you almost
anything."

"I wish you could tell me that this pleasant time was coming. What
is this?" asked she, as the waiter entered, and presented her with a
visiting-card.

"Monsieur the Count desires to know if Mademoiselle will receive him,"
said the man.

"What, how? What does this mean?" exclaimed Beecher, in terror and
astonishment.

"Yes," said she, turning to the waiter; "say, 'With pleasure.'"

"Gracious mercy!" exclaimed Beecher, "you don't know what you 're doing.
Have you seen this person before?"

"Never!"

"Never heard of him!"

"Never," said she, with a faint smile, for the sight of his terror
amused her.

"But who is he, then? How has he dared--"

"Nay," said she, holding behind her back the visiting-card, which he
endeavored to snatch from her hand,--"this is _my_ secret!"

"This is intolerable!" cried Beecher. "What is your father to think
of your admitting a person to visit you,--an utter stranger,--a fellow
Heaven knows--"

At this moment, as if to answer in the most palpable form the question
he was propounding, a somewhat sprucely dressed man, middl