ide the
frontier, as I apprehend."

"How delighted you English are when you can convert an individual case
into an international question! You would at any moment sacrifice an
ancient alliance to the trumpery claim of an aggrieved tourist," said
she, rising angrily, and swept out of the room ere Sir Horace could
arise to open the door for her.

Upton walked slowly to the chimney and rang the bell. "I shall want the
caleche and post-horses at eight o'clock, Antoine. Put up some things
for me, and get all my furs ready." And with this he measured forty
drops from a small phial he carried in his waistcoat pocket, and sat
down to pare his nails with a very diminutive penknife.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. A DIPLOMATIST'S DINNER

Were we writing a drama instead of a true history, we might like to
linger for a few moments on the leave-taking between the Princess and
Sir Horace Upton. They were indeed both consummate "artists," and they
played their parts to perfection,--not as we see high comedy performed
on the stage, by those who grotesque its refinements and exaggerate
its dignity; "lashing to storm" the calm and placid lake, all whose
convulsive throes are many a fathom deep, and whose wildest workings
never bring a ripple to the surface. No, theirs was the true version
of well-bred "performance." A little well-affected grief at separation,
brief as it was meant to be; a little half-expressed surprise, on the
lady's part, at the suddenness of the departure; a little, just
as vaguely conveyed, complaint on the other side, over the severe
requirements of duty, and a very little tenderness--for there was no one
to witness it--at the thought of parting; and with a kiss upon her hand,
whose respectful courtesy no knight-errant of old could have surpassed,
Sir Horace backed from the "presence," sighed, and slipped away.

Had our reader been a spectator instead of a peruser of the events
we have lately detailed, he might have fancied, from certain small
asperities of manner, certain quicknesses of reproof and readiness at
rejoinder, that here were two people only waiting for a reasonable and
decent pretext to go on their separate roads in life. Yet nothing of
this kind was the case; the bond between them was not affection, it was
simply convenience. Their partnership gave them a strength and a social
solvency which would have been sorely damaged had either retired from
"the firm;" and they knew it.

What would the Princess's din