g rolled away in one of the villainous Zurich cabs,
"begin away back in the early days of our sad separation and tell me
everything that has happened to you since."

"Not much has happened," Rosina replied. "I crossed in May and got some
clothes in Paris, and then came Lucerne, and this is June. Before I came
over _nothing_ happened. How could things happen while I had to wear a
crape veil?"

"To be sure!" said Molly wisely; "and yet they do sometimes,--I know it
for a fact. And anyway the veil is off now, and you look so well that I
should think perhaps--lately?"

"Oh, _dear_, no," said Rosina, turning quickly scarlet; "don't harbor
such an idea for a second. Nothing of that sort will ever happen to me
again. A burnt child dreads the fire, and I can assure you I'm cinders
to the last atom. But never mind me, tell me about yourself. That is
much more interesting."

"'About myself is it you're inquiring'?" laughed the Irish girl; "'tis
easy told. Last winter, like a fool, I engaged myself to a sweet young
Russian colonel, and this spring he died--"

"Oh, Molly!"

"Never mind, my dear, because I can assure you that _I_ didn't. Russians
are so furiously made up that he couldn't stand any of the other men
that I was engaged to. My life was too broad a burden in consequence,
and I was well satisfied at his funeral."

"Is it his mother that you are travelling with?"

"His mother! No, dear, I can't stand any of the family now."

"Whose mother is she?"

"She isn't anybody's mother. That's how she can be sixty-five and look
forty-two by gaslight."

"Does she look forty-two by gaslight? Oh, imagine looking forty-two by
gaslight!"

"By men's gaslight she looks forty-two. Any woman could just
instinctively see through everything from her wig to her waist, and
that's why she has grown to hate me so."

"Does she hate you?"

"Hate me! Well, wait until you see her look at me. It's a sort of cross
between a mud-turtle and a basilisk, and she's forever telling my age
and telling it wrong. And she lays for every man that comes near me."

"Why, Molly, how awful!"

"I'm going slowly mad. You've no idea! she's so jealous that life is not
only a burden, it's a weight that's smashing me flatter every day. I'm
getting a gray hair and a wrinkle, and all because of her. And she wrote
Ivan--"

"Who's Ivan?"

"He's one of the men that I've accepted lately; he's her cousin. He's a
prince and she's a princess; but oh, my soul