aid _de bonne foi?_" said she, with a smile where the
expression was far more of severity than sweetness. "Are you treating me
candidly, Mr. Templeton? or is this merely another exercise of your old
functions as Diplomatist?"

I started, partly from actual amazement, partly from a feeling of
indignant shame, at the accusation; but, recovering at once, assured her
calmly and respectfully that all I had said was the simple fact, without
the slightest shade of equivocation.

"So much the better," said she gaily; "for I own to you I was beginning
to suspect our worthy friends of other motives. You know what a tiresome
world of puritanism and mock propriety we live in, and I was actually
disposed to fear that these dear souls had got up both the absence and
the illness not to receive me."

"Not to receive you! Impossible!" said I, with unfeigned astonishment.
"The Howards, whom I have always reckoned as your oldest and most
intimate friends----"

"Oh, yes! very old friends, certainly: but remember that these are
exactly the kind of people who take upon them to be severer than all the
rest of the world, and are ten times as rigid and unforgiving as one's
enemies. Now, as I could not possibly know how this affair might have
been told to them----"

"What affair? I'm really quite in the dark to what you allude."

"I mean my separation from Favancourt."

"Are you separated from your husband, Lady Blanche?" asked I, in a state
of agitation in strong contrast to her calm and quiet manner.

"What a question, when all the papers have been discussing it these
three weeks! And from an old admirer, too! Shame on you, Mr. Templeton!"

I know not how it was, but the levity of this speech, given as it was,
made my cheek flush till it actually seemed to burn.

"Nay, nay, I didn't mean you to blush so deeply," said she, "And what a
dear, sweet, innocent kind of life you must have been leading here,
on this romantic lake, to be capable of such soft emotions! Oh, dear!"
sighed she, weariedly. "You men have an immense advantage in your
affairs of the heart; you can always begin as freshly with each new
affection, and be as youthful in sentiment with each new love, as we
are with our only passion. Now I see it all; you have been getting up a
'_tendre_' here for somebody or other:--not Taglioni, I hope, for I see
that is her Villa yonder,--There, don't look indignant. This same
Lake of Como has long been known to be the paradise of _da