than as it was or is, or, indeed, is like shortly to become. The
strangest part of his picture is, however, the fact that he actually did
see Mrs. Lee where he has put her, at the Princess's elbow, which was
almost the last place in the room where any one who knew Mrs. Lee would
have looked for her.

The explanation of this curious accident shall be given immediately,
since the facts are not mentioned in the public reports of the
ball, which only said that, "close behind her Royal Highness the
Grand-Duchess, stood our charming and aristocratic countrywoman, Mrs.
Lightfoot Lee, who has made so great a sensation in Washington this
winter, and whose name public rumour has connected with that of the
Secretary of the Treasury. To her the Princess appeared to address most
of her conversation."

The show was a very pretty one, and on a pleasant April evening there
were many places less agreeable to be in than this. Much ground outside
had been roofed over, to make a ball-room, large as an opera-house, with
a dais and a sofa in the centre of one long side, and another dais with
a second sofa immediately opposite to it in the centre of the other long
side. Each dais had a canopy of red velvet, one bearing the Lion and the
Unicorn, the other the American Eagle. The Royal Standard was displayed
above the Unicorn; the Stars-and-Stripes, not quite so effectively,
waved above the Eagle. The Princess, being no longer quite a child,
found gas trying to her complexion, and compelled Lord Skye to
illuminate her beauty by one hundred thousand wax candies, more or less,
which were arranged to be becoming about the Grand-ducal throne, and to
be showy and unbecoming about the opposite institution across the way.

The exact facts were these. It had happened that the Grand-Duchess,
having been necessarily brought into contact with the President, and
particularly with his wife, during the past week, had conceived for
the latter an antipathy hardly to be expressed in words. Her fixed
determination was at any cost to keep the Presidential party at a
distance, and it was only after a stormy scene that the Grand-Duke and
Lord Skye succeeded in extorting her consent that the President should
take her to supper. Further than this she would not go. She would not
speak to "that woman," as she called the President's wife, nor be in her
neighbourhood. She would rather stay in her own room all the evening,
and she did not care in the least what the Que