“What an insufferable bore, dear Princess!” sighed Sir Horace, as he opened the square-shaped envelope that contained his Royal Highnesses invitation to dinner.

“I mean to be seriously indisposed,” said Madame de Sabloukoff; “one gets nothing but chagrin in intercourse with petty Courts.”

“Like provincial journals, they only reproduce what has appeared in the metropolitan papers, and give you old gossip for fresh intelligence.”

“Or, worse again, ask you to take an interest in their miserable 'localisms,'—the microscopic contentions of insect life.”

“They have given us a sentry at the door, I perceive,” said Sir Horace, with assumed indifference.

“A very proper attention!” remarked the lady, in a tone that more than half implied the compliment was one intended for herself.

“Have you seen the Chevalier Stubber yet?” asked Upton.

“No; he has been twice here, but I was dressing, or writing notes. And you?”

“I told him to come about two o'clock,” sighed Sir Horace. “I rather like Stubber.”

This was said in a tone of such condescension that it sounded as though the utterer was confessing to an amicable weakness in his nature,—“I rather like Stubber.”

Though there was something meant to invite agreement in the tone, the Princess only accepted the speech with a slight motion of her eyebrows, and a look of half unwilling assent.

“I know he's not of your world, dear Princess, but he belongs to that Anglo-Saxon stock we are so prone to associate with all the ideas of rugged, unadorned virtue.”

“Rugged and unadorned indeed!” echoed the lady.

“And yet never vulgar,” rejoined Upton,—“never affecting to be other than he is; and, stranger still, not self-opinionated and conceited.”

“I own to you,” said she, haughtily, “that the whole Court here puts me in mind of Hayti, with its Marquis of Orgeat and its Count Marmalade. These people, elevated from menial station to a mock nobility, only serve to throw ridicule upon themselves and the order that they counterfeit. No socialist in Europe has done such service to the cause of democracy as the Prince of Massa!”

“Honesty is such a very rare quality in this world that I am not surprised at his Highness prizing it under any garb. Now, Stubber is honest.”

“He says so himself, I am told.”

“Yes, he says so, and I believe him. He has been employed in situations of considerable trust, and always acquitted himself well. Such a man cannot have escaped temptations, and yet even his enemies do not accuse him of venality.”

“Good Heavens! what more would he have than his legitimate spoils? He is a Minister of the Household, with an ample salary; a Master of the Horse; an inspector of Woods and Forests; a something over Church lands; and a Red Cross of Massa besides. I am quite 'made up' in his dignities, for they are all set forth on his visiting-card with what purports to be a coat of arms at top.” And, as she spoke, she held out the card in derision.

“That's silly, I must say,” said Upton, smiling; “and yet, I suppose that here in Massa it was requisite he should assert all his pretensions thus openly.”

“Perhaps so,” said she, dryly.

“And, after all,” said Upton, who seemed rather bent on a system of mild tormenting,—“after all, there is something amiable in the weakness of this display,—it smacks of gratitude! It is like saying to the world, 'See what the munificence of my master has made me!'”

“What a delicate compliment, too, to his nobles, which proclaims that for a station of trust and probity the Prince must recruit from the kitchen and the stables. To my thinking, there is no such impertinent delusion as that popular one which asserts that we must seek for everything in its least likely place,—take ministers out of counting-houses, and military commanders from shop-boards. For the treatment of weighty questions in peace or war, the gentleman element is the first essential.”

“Just as long as the world thinks so, dear Princess; not an hour longer.”

The Princess arose, and walked the room in evident displeasure. She half suspected that his objections were only devices to irritate, and she determined not to prolong the discussion. The temptation to reply proved, however, too strong for her resolution, and she said,—

“The world has thought so for some centuries; and when a passing shade of doubt has shaken the conviction, have not the people rushed from revolution into actual bondage, as though any despotism were better than the tyranny of their own passions?”

“I opine,” said Upton, calmly, “that the 'prestige' of the gentleman consists in his belonging to an 'order.' Now, that is a privilege that cannot be enjoyed by a mere popular leader. It is like the contrast between a club and a public meeting.”

“It is something that you confess these people have no 'prestige,'” said she, triumphantly. “Indeed, their presence in the world of politics, to my thinking, is a mere symbol of change,—an evidence that we are in some stage of transition.”

“So we are, madame; there is nothing more true. Every people of Europe have outgrown their governments, like young heirs risen to manhood, ordering household affairs to their will. The popular voice now swells above the whisper of cabinets. So long as each country limits itself to home questions, this spirit will attract but slight notice. Let the issue, however, become a great international one, and you will see the popular will declaring wars, cementing alliances, and signing peaces in a fashion to make statecraft tremble!”

“And you approve of this change, and welcome it?” asked she, derisively.

“I have never said so, madame. I foresee the hurricane, that's all. Men like Stubber are to be seen almost everywhere throughout Europe. They are a kind of declaration that, for the government and guidance of mankind, the possession of a good head and an honest heart is amply sufficient; that rulers neither need fourteen quarterings nor names coeval with the Roman Empire.”

“You have given me but another reason to detest him,” said the Princess, angrily. “I don't think I shall receive him to-day.”

“But you want to speak with him about that villa; there is some formality to be gone through before a foreigner can own property here. I think you promised Glencore you would arrange the matter.”

She made no reply, and he continued: “Poor fellow! a very short lease would suffice for his time; he is sinking rapidly. The conflict his mind wages between hope and doubt has hastened all the symptoms of his malady.”

“In such a struggle a woman has more courage than a man.”

“Say more boldness, Princess,” said Upton, slyly.

“I repeat, courage, sir. It is fear, and nothing but fear, that agitates him. He is afraid of the world's sneer; afraid of what society will think, and say, and write about him; afraid of the petty gossip of the millions he will never see or hear of. This cowardice it is that checks him in every aspiration to vindicate his wife's honor and his boy's birth.”

“Si cela se peut,” said Upton, with a very equivocal smile.

A look of haughty anger, with a flush of crimson on her cheek, was the only answer she made him.

“I mean that he is really not in a position to prove or disprove anything. He assumed certain 'levities'—I suppose the word will do—to mean more than levities; he construed indiscretions into grave faults, and faults into crimes. But that he did all this without sufficient reason, or that he now has abundant evidence that he was mistaken, I am unable to say, nor is it with broken faculties and a wandering intellect that he can be expected to review the past and deliver judgment on it.”

“The whole moral of which is: what a luckless fate is that of a foreign wife United to an English husband!”

“There is much force in the remark,” said Upton, calmly.

“To have her thoughts, and words, and actions submitted to the standard of a nation whose moral subtleties she could never comprehend; to be taught that a certain amount of gloom must be mixed up with life, just as bitters are taken for tonics; that ennui is the sure type of virtue, and low spirits the healthiest condition of the mind,—these are her first lessons: no wonder if she find them hard ones.

“To be told that all the harmless familiarities she has seen from her childhood are dangerous freedoms, all the innocent gayeties of the world about her are snares and pitfalls, is to make existence little better than a penal servitude,—this is lesson the second. While, to complete her education, she is instructed how to assume a censorial rigidity of manner that would shame a duenna, and a condemnatory tone that assumes to arraign all the criminals of society, and pass sentence on them. How amiable she may become in disposition, and how suitable as a companion by this training, you, sir, and your countrymen are best able to pronounce.”

“You rather exaggerate our demerits, my dear Princess,” said Upton, smiling. “We really do not like to be so very odious as you would make us.”

“You are excellent people, with whom no one can live,—that's the whole of it,” said she, with a saucy laugh. “If your friend Lord Glencore had been satisfied to stay at home and marry one of his own nation, he might have escaped a deal of unhappiness, and saved a most amiable creature much more sorrow than falls to the lot of the least fortunate of her own country. I conclude you have some influence over him?”

“As much, perhaps, as any one; but even that says little.”

“Can you not use it, therefore, to make him repair a great wrong?”

“You had some plan, I think?” said he, hesitatingly.

“Yes; I have written to her to come down here. I have pretended that her presence is necessary to certain formalities about the sale of the villa. I mean that they should meet, without apprising either of them. I have sent the boy out of the way to Pontremoli to make me a copy of some frescoes there; till the success of my scheme be decided, I did not wish to make him a party to it.”

“You don't know Glencore,—at least as I know him.”

“There is no reason that I should,” broke she in. “What I would try is an experiment, every detail of which I would leave to chance. Were this a case where all the wrong were on one side, and all the forgiveness to come from the other, friendly aid and interposition might well be needed; but here is a complication which neither you, nor I, nor any one else can pretend to unravel. Let them meet, therefore, and let Fate—if that be the name for it—decide what all the prevention and planning in the world could never provide for.”

“The very fact that their meeting has been plotted beforehand will suggest distrust.”

“Their manner in meeting will be the best answer to that,” said she, resolutely. “There will be no acting between them, depend upon 't.”

“He told me that he had destroyed the registry of their marriage, nor does he know where a single witness of the ceremony could be found.”

“I don't want to know how he could make the amende till I know that he is ready to do it,” said she, in the same calm tone.

“To have arranged a meeting with the boy had perhaps been better than this. Glencore has not avowed it, but I think I can detect misgivings for his treatment of the youth.”

“This was my first thought, and I spoke to young Massy the evening before Lord Glencore arrived. I led him to tell me of his boyish days in Ireland and his home there; a stern resolution to master all emotion seemed to pervade whatever he said; and though, perhaps, the effort may have cost him much, his manner did not betray it. He told me that he was illegitimate, that the secret was divulged to him by his own father, that he had never heard who his mother was, nor what rank in life she occupied. When I said that she was one in high station, that she was alive and well, and one of my own dearest friends, a sudden crimson covered his face, as quickly followed by a sickly pallor; and though he trembled in every limb, he never spoke a word. I endeavored to excite in him some desire to learn more of her, if not to see her, but in vain. The hard lesson he had taught himself enabled him to repress every semblance of feeling. It was only when at last, driven to the very limits of my patience, I abruptly asked him, 'Have you no wish to see your mother?' that his coldness gave way, and, in a voice tremulous and thick, he said, 'My shame is enough for myself.' I was burning to say more, to put before him a contingency, the mere shadow of a possibility that his claim to birth and station might one day or other be vindicated. I did not actually do so, but I must have let drop some chance word that betrayed my meaning, for he caught me up quickly, and said, 'It would come too late, if it came even to-day. I am that which I am by many a hard struggle; you 'll never see me risk a disappointment in life by any encouragement I may give to hope.'

“I then adverted to his father; but he checked me at once, saying, 'When the ties that should be closest in life are stained with shame and dishonor, they are bonds of slavery, not of affection. My debt to Lord Glencore is the degradation I live in,—none other. His heritage to me is the undying conflict in my heart between what I once thought I was and what I now know I am. If we met, it would be to tell him so.' In a word, every feature of the father's proud unforgivingness is reproduced in the boy, and I dreaded the very possibility of their meeting. If ever Lord Glencore avow his marriage and vindicate his wife's honor, his hardest task will be reconciliation with this boy.”

“All, and more than all, the evils I anticipated have followed this insane vengeance,” said Upton. “I begin to think that one ought to leave a golden bridge even to our revenge, Princess.”

“Assuredly, wherever a woman is the victim,” said she, smiling; “for you are so certain to have reasons for distrusting yourself.”

Upton sat meditating for some time on the plan of the Princess; had it only originated with himself, it was exactly the kind of project he would have liked. He knew enough of life to be aware that one can do very little more than launch events upon the great ocean of destiny; that the pretension to guide and direct them is oftener a snare than anything else; that the contingencies and accidents, the complications too, which beset every move in life, disconcert all one's pre-arrangements, so that it is rare indeed when we are able to pursue the same path towards any object by which we have set out.

As the scheme was, however, that of another, he now scrutinized it, and weighed every objection to its accomplishment, constantly returning to the same difficulty, as he said,—

“You do not know Glencore.”

“The man who has but one passion, one impulse in life, is rarely a difficult study,” was the measured reply. “Lord Glencore's vengeance has worn itself out, exactly as all similar outbreaks of temper do, for want of opposition. There was nothing to feed, nothing to minister to it. He sees—I have taken care that he should see—that his bolt has not struck the mark; that her position is not the precarious thing he meant to make it, but a station as much protected and fenced round by its own conventionalities as that of any, the proudest lady in society. For one that dares to impugn her, there are full fifty ready to condemn him; and all this has been done without reprisal or recrimination; no partisanship to arraign his moroseness and his cruelty,—none of that 'coterie' defence which divides society into two sections. This, of course, has wounded his pride, but it has not stimulated his anger; but, above all, it has imparted to her the advantage of a dignity of which his vengeance was intended to deprive her.”

“You must be a sanguine and a hopeful spirit, Princess, if you deem that such elements will unite happily hereafter,” said Upton, smiling.

“I really never carried my speculations so far,” replied she. “It is in actual life, as in that of the stage, quite sufficient to accompany the actors to the fall of the curtain.”

“The Chevalier Stubber, madame,” said a servant, entering, “wishes to know if you will receive him.”

“Yes—no—yes. Tell him to come in,” said, she rapidly, as she resumed her seat beside the fire.