it
became depressed, but this was when the Grand-Duke came up to claim his
waltz, and the look rapidly passed away when they got upon the floor and
his Highness began to wheel round the room with a precision and momentum
that would have done honour to a regiment of Life Guards. He seemed
pleased with his experiment, for he was seen again and again careering
over the floor with Sybil until Mrs. Lee herself became nervous, for the
Princess frowned.

After her release Madeleine lingered awhile in the ball-room to speak
with her sister and to receive congratulations. For half an hour she was
a greater belle than Sybil. A crowd of men clustered about her, amused
at the part she had played in the evening's entertainment and full of
compliments upon her promotion at Court. Lord Skye himself found time to
offer her his thanks in a more serious tone than he generally affected.
"You have suffered much," said he, "and I am grateful." Madeleine
laughed as she answered that her sufferings had seemed nothing to her
while she watched his. But at last she became weary of the noise and
glare of the ball-room, and, accepting the arm of her excellent friend
Count Popoff, she strolled with him back to the house. There at last
she sat down on a sofa in a quiet window-recess where the light was less
strong and where a convenient laurel spread its leaves in front so as
to make a bower through which she could see the passers-by without being
seen by them except with an effort. Had she been a younger woman, this
would have been the spot for a flirtation, but Mrs. Lee never flirted,
and the idea of her flirting with Popoff would have seemed ludicrous to
all mankind.

He did not sit down, but was leaning against the angle of the wall,
talking with her, when suddenly Mr. Ratcliffe appeared and took the seat
by her side with such deliberation and apparent sense of property that
Popoff incontinently turned and fled. No one knew where the Secretary
came from, or how he learned that she was there. He made no explanation
and she took care to ask for none. She gave him a highly-coloured
account of her evening's service as lady-in-waiting, which he matched
by that of his own trials as gentleman-usher to the President, who, it
seemed, had clung desperately to his old enemy in the absence of any
other rock to clutch at.

Ratcliffe looked the character of Prime Minister sufficiently well at
this moment. He would have held his own, at a pinch, in any Cour