es? Surely the
very thought of him brings up the Arabian Nights and the Calif Haroun.
By the way, thank you for the poignard. It is true Damascus, is it not?"

"Of course. I 'd not have dared--"

"To be sure not. I told the Archduchess it was. I wore it in my Turkish
dress on Wednesday, and you, false man, would n't come to admire me!"

"You know what a sad day was that for me, madam," said he, solemnly. "It
was the anniversary of her fate who was your only rival in beauty, as
she had no rival in undeserved misfortunes."

"_Pauvre Reine!_" sighed the Countess, and held her bouquet to her face.

"What great mass of papers is that you have there, Duke?" resumed she.
"Can it be a journal?"

"It is an English newspaper, my dear Countess. As I know you do not
receive any of his countrymen, I have not asked your permission
to present the Lord Selby; but hearing him read out your name in a
paragraph here, I carried off his paper to have it translated for me.
You read English, don't you?"

"Very imperfectly, and I detest it," said she, impatiently; "but Prince
Volkoffsky can, I am sure, oblige you." And she turned away her head, in
ill humor.

"It is here somewhere. _Parbleu_, I thought I marked the place,"
muttered the Duke, as he handed the paper to the Russian. "Is n't that
it?"

"This is all about theatres,--Madame Pasta and the Haymarket."

"Ah! well, it is lower down; here, perhaps."

"Court news. The Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar--"

"No, no; not that."

"Oh, here it is. 'Great Scandal in High Life.--A very singular
correspondence has just passed, and will soon, we believe, be made
public, between the Heralds' College and Lord Glencore.'" Here the
reader stopped, and lowered his voice at the next word.

"Read on, Prince. _C'est mon mari_," said she, coldly, while a very
slight movement of her upper lip betrayed what might mean scorn or
sorrow, or even both.

The Prince, however, had now run his eyes over the paragraph, and
crushing the newspaper in his hand, hurried away from the spot. The Duke
as quickly followed, and soon overtook him.

"Who gave you this paper, Duke?" cried the Russian, angrily.

"It was Lord Selby. He was reading it aloud to a friend."

"Then he is an _infame!_ and I 'll tell him so," cried the other,
passionately. "Which is he? the one with the light moustache, or the
shorter one?" And, without waiting for reply, the Russian dashed between
the carriages, and thrusting his way thro