quite comfortably, and that horrible De Pel had no idea in life!  Eugenia had just said, “This ice sickens me!  I do not taste the flavour of the vanille.”  I answered, “It is here!  It must—­it cannot but be here!  You love the flavour of the vanille?” With her exquisite smile, I see her now saying, “Too well! it is necessary to me!  I live on it!”—­when up he came.  In his eagerness, his foot just effleured my robe.  Oh!  I never shall forget!  In an instant he was down on one knee it was so momentary that none saw it but we three, and done with ineffable grace.  “Pardon!” he said, in his sweet Portuguese; “Pardon!” looking up—­the handsomest man I ever beheld; and when I think of that odious wretch the other night, with his “Oh! ’m sure, beg pardon, ’m sure! ’pon my honour!” I could have kicked him—­I could, indeed!’

Here the Countess laughed out, but relapsed into: 

’Alas! that Belmarana should have betrayed that beautiful trusting creature to De Pel.  Such scandal! a duel!—­the Duke was wounded.  For a whole year Eugenia did not dare to appear at Court, but had to remain immured in her country-house, where she heard that Belmarana had married De Pel!  It was for her money, of course.  Rich as Croesus, and as wicked as the black man below! as dear papa used to say.  By the way, weren’t we talking of Evan?  Ah,—­yes!’

And so forth.  The Countess was immensely admired, and though her sisters said that she was ‘foreignized’ overmuch, they clung to her desperately.  She seemed so entirely to have eclipsed tailordom, or ‘Demogorgon,’ as the Countess was pleased to call it.  Who could suppose this grand-mannered lady, with her coroneted anecdotes and delicious breeding, the daughter of that thing?  It was not possible to suppose it.  It seemed to defy the fact itself.

They congratulated her on her complete escape from Demogorgon.  The Countess smiled on them with a lovely sorrow.

’Safe from the whisper, my dears; the ceaseless dread?  If you knew what I have to endure!  I sometimes envy you.  ’Pon my honour, I sometimes wish I had married a fishmonger!  Silva, indeed, is a most excellent husband.  Polished! such polish as you know not of in England.  He has a way—­a wriggle with his shoulders in company—­I cannot describe it to you; so slight! so elegant! and he is all that a woman could desire.  But who could be safe in any part of the earth, my dears, while papa will go about so, and behave so extraordinarily?  I was at dinner at your English embassy a month ago, and there was Admiral Combleman, then on the station off Lisbon, Sir Jackson Racial’s friend, who was the Admiral at Lymport formerly.  I knew him at once, and thought, oh! what shall I do!  My heart was like a lump of lead.  I would have given worlds that we might one of us have smothered the other!  I had to sit beside him—­it always happens!  Thank heaven! he did not identify me.  And then he told an anecdote of Papa.  It was the dreadful