ted or beheaded at
each change of Pope. And I, in my quality of Protestant, should have
been driven from France, persecuted in Austria, molested in Italy,
burned in Spain."

As can be seen, he took care to choose between his two inheritances. He
had done so with an enigmatical good-nature which was almost ironical.
He paused, in order not to mention what might have come to Madame
Maitland before the suppression of slavery. He knew that the very pretty
and elegant young lady shared the prejudices of her American compatriots
against negro blood, and that she made every effort to hide the blemish
upon her birth to the point of never removing her gloves. It may,
however, in justice be added, that the slightly olive tinge in her
complexion, her wavy hair, and a vague bluish reflection in the whites
of her eyes would scarcely have betrayed the mixture of race. She did
not seem to have heeded the Baron's pause, but she arranged, with an
absent air, the folds of her mauve gown, while Dorsenne replied: "It
is a fine and specious argument.... Its only fault is that it has no
foundation. For I defy you to imagine yourself what you would have been
in the epoch of which you speak. We say frequently, 'If I had lived a
hundred years ago.' We forget that a hundred years ago we should not
have been the same; that we should not have had the same ideas, the same
tastes, nor the same requirements. It is almost the same as imagining
that you could think like a bird or a serpent."

"One could very well imagine what it would be never to have been born,"
interrupted. Alba Steno.

She uttered the sentence in so peculiar a manner that the discussion
begun by Hafner was nipped in the bud.

The words produced their effect upon the chatter of the idlers who only
partly believed in the ideas they put forth. Although there is always a
paradox in condemning life amid a scene of luxury when one is not more
than twenty, the Contessina was evidently sincere. Whence came that
sincerity? From what corner of her youthful heart, wounded almost to
death? Dorsenne was the only person who asked himself the question, for
the conversation turned at once, Lydia Maitland having touched with
her fan the sleeve of Alba, who was two seats from her, to ask her this
question with an irony as charming, after the young girl's words, as it
was involuntary:

"It is silk muslin, is it not?"

"Yes," replied the Contessina, who rose and leaned over, to offer to
the cur