irts), and then sat down to a little quiet chat
with Virginie von Edenburgh, who's pretty, intelligent, and unaffected,
though she's a belle at the Viennese court. Telfer was pleasant with the
little comtesse; he'd known her from childhood, and she was engaged to
the colonel of Marc's troop, so that Telfer felt quite sure she'd no
designs upon him, and talked to her _sans gene_, though to have wholly
abstained from bitterness and satire would have been an impossibility to
him, with the obnoxious Tressillian seated within sight. Once he fixed
her with his calm gray eyes, she met them with a proud flashing glance;
Telfer gave back the defiance, and _guerre a outrance_ was declared
between them. It was plain to see that they hated one another by
instinct, and I began to think Calceolaria wasn't so safe in my stables
after all, for if the Major set his face against anything, his father,
who pretty well worshipped him, would never venture to do it in
opposition; he'd as soon think of leaving Torwood to the country, to be
turned into an infirmary or a museum.

That whole day Telfer was agreeable to the Von Edenburgh, distantly
courteous to the Carterets, and utterly oblivious of the very existence
of the Tressillian. When we were smoking together, after dinner, he
began to unburden himself of his mighty wrath.

"Where the deuce did you pick up that girl, Marc?" asked he, as we stood
looking at the sun setting over the woods of Essellau, and crimsoning
the western clouds.

"What girl?" asked Marc.

"That confounded Tressillian," answered the Major, gloomily.

"I told you the Carterets were friends of my mother's, and last year,
when the Tressillian came with them to Baden, Virginie met her, and they
were struck with a great and sudden love for one another, after the
insane custom of women. But why on earth, Telfer, do you call her such
names? I think her divine; her eyes are something----"

"I wish her eyes had been at the devil before she'd bewitched my poor
father with them," said Telfer, pulling a rose to pieces fiercely. "I
give you my word, Marc, that if I didn't like you so well, I'd go
straight off home to-morrow. Here have I been turning out of my route
twenty times, on purpose to avoid her, and then she must turn up at the
very place I thought I was sure to be safe from her. It's enough to make
a man swear, I should say, and not over-mildly either."

"But what's she done?" cried Von Edenburgh, thinking, I dare