I don't
care for him so very much," she continued, drying her tears; "only it
seems so lonely now he is gone."

Mrs. Lee remained on the couch, with her arm round her sister's
neck, silent, gazing into vacancy, the picture of perplexity and
consternation.

The situation was getting beyond her control.

Chapter XI

IN the middle of April a sudden social excitement started the
indolent city of Washington to its feet. The Grand-Duke and Duchess of
Saxe-Baden-Hombourg arrived in America on a tour of pleasure, and in
due course came on to pay their respects to the Chief Magistrate of
the Union. The newspapers hastened to inform their readers that the
Grand-Duchess was a royal princess of England, and, in the want of any
other social event, every one who had any sense of what was due to his
or her own dignity, hastened to show this august couple the respect
which all republicans who have a large income derived from business,
feel for English royalty. New York gave a dinner, at which the most
insignificant person present was worth at least a million dollars, and
where the gentlemen who sat by the Princess entertained her for an hour
or two by a calculation of the aggregate capital represented. New York
also gave a ball at which the Princess appeared in an ill-fitting black
silk dress with mock lace and jet ornaments, among several hundred
toilets that proclaimed the refined republican simplicity of their
owners at a cost of various hundred thousand dollars. After these
hospitalities the Grand-ducal pair came on to Washington, where they
became guests of Lord Skye, or, more properly, Lord Skye became their
guest, for he seemed to consider that he handed the Legation over to
them, and he told Mrs. Lee, with true British bluntness of speech,
that they were a great bore and he wished they had stayed in
Saxe-Baden-Hombourg, or wherever they belonged, but as they were here,
he must be their lackey. Mrs. Lee was amused and a little astonished at
the candour with which he talked about them, and she was instructed
and improved by his dry account of the Princess, who, it seemed, made
herself disagreeable by her airs of royalty; who had suffered dreadfully
from the voyage; and who detested America and everything American; but
who was, not without some show of reason, jealous of her husband, and
endured endless sufferings, though with a very bad grace, rather than
lose sight of him.

Not only was Lord Skye obliged to turn the