person hastily passed through the
room, saluting us as he went.

"I have seen that face before," said I to my friend; "do you know him?"

"To be sure!" said he, smiling; "one must be young in diplomacy not to
know the Mephistophiles of the craft; and I guess why he is here, too:
that fellow is in the pay of the Prince de Capua, but has sold him to
Louis Philippe. The reconciliation with Naples would have been long
since effected but for the King of the French."

"And his name--this man's name--what is it?"

"Salvatori."

"What! the same who married an English girl at Naples?"

"And sold her to the Marquis Brandini for ten thousand sequini. The very
man. But here comes the messenger to say his Excellency will receive
us."

My friend quitted Paris the moment his interview ended, and I heard no
more.

Last night I saw her in the Cursaal--beautiful, perhaps more beautiful
than ever! At least there was a lofty elegance and a splendour about her
that I never remember in her girlish days; nor was it till she smiled
that I could now believe that the queen-like beauty before me was the
timid, delicate girl I first saw tripping along the narrow path of a
Welsh mountain.

Even from the gossip of Baden I could learn no more about her than that
she was a Sicilian Countess of great wealth, and a widow; that she was
intimately received into the very highest circles--even of royalty--and
constantly was seen driving in the carriage of the Archduchess. It was,
then, possible that I might be mistaken, after all! Great people are not
accessible so easily.

I tried in various quarters to get presented to her--for she shewed not
the slightest sign of having ever met me--but failed every where: they
who knew her did not do so intimately enough to introduce me.

The reminiscences I have just jotted down have made me miserably
feverish and ill; for although I now begin to doubt that I ever saw this
Countess before, the sad story of Caroline Graham is ever present to my
mind--a terrible type of the fortune of many a fair English girl left to
the merciless caprice of a foreign husband!

I am not bigot enough to fancy that happy, eminently happy, marriages do
not exist abroad as well as with us; but I am fully minded to say that
the individuals should be of the same nation, reared in the midst of the
same traditions, imbued with feelings that a common country, language,
and religion bestow.

I know of nothing that presents so piti