a weighty
quarto. "Yarmouth bloaters; Atkinson's cerulean paste for the eyebrows;
Worcester sauce; trade returns for Tahiti; a set of shoemaking
tools; eight bottles of Darby's pyloric corrector; buffalo
flesh-brushes,--devilish hard they seem; Hume's speech on the reduction
of foreign legations; novels from Bull's; top-boots for a tiger; and a
mass of letters," said Stevins, throwing them broadcast over the sofa.

"No despatches?" cried Upton, eagerly.

"Not one, by Jove!" said Stevins.

"Open one of those Darby's. I 'll take a teaspoonful at once. Will you
try it, Stevins?"

"Thanks, your Excellency, I never take physic."

"Well, you dine here, then," said he, with a sly look at the Princess.

"Not to-day, your Excellency. I dine with Grammont at eight."

"Then I'll not detain you. Come back here to-morrow about eleven or a
little later. Come to breakfast if you like."

"At what hour?"

"I don't know,--at any hour," sighed Upton, as he opened one of his
letters and began to read; and Stevins bowed and withdrew, totally
unnoticed and unrecognized as he slipped from the room.

One after another Upton threw down, after reading half a dozen lines,
muttering some indistinct syllables over the dreary stupidity of
letter-writers in general. Occasionally he came upon some pressing
appeal for money,--some urgent request for even a small remittance by
the next post; and these he only smiled at, while he refolded them with
a studious care and neatness. "Why will you not help me with this chaos,
dear Princess?" said he, at last.

"I am only waiting to be asked," said she; "but I feared that there
might be secrets--"

"From you?" said he, with a voice of deep tenderness, while his eyes
sparkled with an expression far more like raillery than affection. The
Princess, however, had either not seen or not heeded it, for she was
already deep in the correspondence.

"This is strictly private. Am I to read it?" said she.

"Of course," said he, bowing courteously. And she read:--

"Dear Upton,--Let us have a respite from tariffs and trade-talk for a
month or two, and tell me rather what the world is doing around you. We
have never got the right end of that story about the Princess Celestine
as yet. Who was he? Not Labinsky, I'll be sworn. The K---- insists it
was Roseville, and I hope you may be able to assure me that he is
mistaken. He is worse tempered than ever. That Glencore business has
exasperated him greatly. Coul