“‘My petition is to your pity, to remove
it.’
“‘And mine to yours, to let it stay where
it is,’ she replied.
“’Well, then, at least you will tell me
whether you are French or German; you speak both languages
so perfectly.’
“’I don’t think I shall tell you
that, General; you intend a surprise, and are meditating
the particular point of attack.’
“‘At all events, you won’t deny
this,’ I said, ’that being honored by
your permission to converse, I ought to know how to
address you. Shall I say Madame la Comtesse?’
“She laughed, and she would, no doubt, have
met me with another evasion—if, indeed,
I can treat any occurrence in an interview every circumstance
of which was prearranged, as I now believe, with the
profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by accident.
“‘As to that,’ she began; but she
was interrupted, almost as she opened her lips, by
a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked particularly
elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, that
his face was the most deadly pale I ever saw, except
in death. He was in no masquerade—in
the plain evening dress of a gentleman; and he said,
without a smile, but with a courtly and unusually low
bow:—
“’Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to
say a very few words which may interest her?’
“The lady turned quickly to him, and touched
her lip in token of silence; she then said to me,
’Keep my place for me, General; I shall return
when I have said a few words.’
“And with this injunction, playfully given,
she walked a little aside with the gentleman in black,
and talked for some minutes, apparently very earnestly.
They then walked away slowly together in the crowd,
and I lost them for some minutes.
“I spent the interval in cudgeling my brains
for a conjecture as to the identity of the lady who
seemed to remember me so kindly, and I was thinking
of turning about and joining in the conversation between
my pretty ward and the Countess’s daughter,
and trying whether, by the time she returned, I might
not have a surprise in store for her, by having her
name, title, chateau, and estates at my fingers’
ends. But at this moment she returned, accompanied
by the pale man in black, who said:
“’I shall return and inform Madame la
Comtesse when her carriage is at the door.’
“He withdrew with a bow.”
A Petition
“’Then we are to lose Madame la Comtesse,
but I hope only for a few hours,’ I said, with
a low bow.
“’It may be that only, or it may be a
few weeks. It was very unlucky his speaking to
me just now as he did. Do you now know me?’
“I assured her I did not.
