and faith? Faith! The mocking world tramples
on it, n'est-ce pas? Love! The brutal world strangles the heaven-born
infant at its birth. Hope! It smiled at me in my little convent chamber,
played among the flowers which I cherished, warbled with the birds that
I loved. But it quitted me at the door of the world, Stenio. It folded
its white wings and veiled its radiant face! In return for my young
love, they gave me--sixty years, the dregs of a selfish heart, egotism
cowering over its fire, and cold for all its mantle of ermine! In place
of the sweet flowers of my young years, they gave me these, Stenio!" and
she pointed to her feathers and her artificial roses. "Oh, I should
like to crush them under my feet!" and she put out the neatest little
slipper. The Duchesse was great upon her wrongs, and paraded her
blighted innocence to every one who would feel interested by that
piteous spectacle. The music here burst out more swiftly and melodiously
than before; the pretty little feet forgot their desire to trample upon
the world. She shrugged the lean little shoulders--"Eh!" said the Queen
of Scots, "dansons et oublions;" and Stenio's arm once more surrounded
her fairy waist (she called herself a fairy; other ladies called her a
skeleton); and they whirled away in the waltz again and presently
she and Stenio came bumping up against the stalwart Lord Kew and the
ponderous Madame de Gumpelheim, as a wherry dashes against the oaken
ribs of a steamer.

The little couple did not fall; they were struck on to a neighbouring
bench, luckily: but there was a laugh at the expense of Stenio and the
Queen of Scots--and Lord Kew, settling his panting partner on to a seat,
came up to make excuses for his awkwardness to the lady who had been its
victim. At the laugh produced by the catastrophe, the Duchesse's eyes
gleamed with anger.

"M. de Castillonnes," she said to her partner, "have you had any quarrel
with that Englishman?"

"With ce milor? But no," said Stenio.

"He did it on purpose. There has been no day but his family has insulted
me!" hissed out the Duchesse, and at this moment Lord Kew came up to
make his apologies. He asked a thousand pardons of Madame la Duchesse
for being so maladroit.

"Maladroit! et tres maladroit, monsieur," says Stenio, curling his
moustache; "c'est bien le mot, monsieur!

"Also, I make my excuses to Madame la Duchesse, which I hope she will
receive," said Lord Kew. The Duchesse shrugged her shoulder