"Diable, M. le Comte! Germans transformed the world! What revolutions do you speak of? ”

"The invention of gunpowder, the invention of printing, and the expansion of a monk's quarrel with his Pope into the Lutheran revolution."

CHAPTER VII.

A LITTLE later Graham found himself alone amongst the crowd. Attracted by the sound of music, he had strayed into one of the rooms whence it came, and in which, though his range of acquaintance Here the German paused, and asked at Paris was, for an Englishman, large the Vicomte to introduce him to Vane, and somewhat miscellaneous, he recogwhich De Brézé did by the title of Count nized no familiar countenance. A lady von Rudesheim. On hearing Vane's was playing the pianoforte - playing rename, the Count inquired if he were re-markably well-with accurate science, lated to the orator and statesman, George with that equal lightness and strength of Graham Vane, whose opinions, uttered in finger which produces brilliancy of exeParliament, were still authoritative among cution. But to appreciate her music one German thinkers. This compliment to should be musical one's self. It wanted his deceased father immensely gratified, the charm that fascinates the uninitiated. but at the same time considerably sur- The guests in the room were musical conprised, the Englishman. His father, no noisseurs - a class with whom Graham doubt, had been a man of much influence Vane had nothing in common. Even if in the British House of Commons —a he had been more capable of enjoying the very weighty speaker, and, while in office, excellence of the player's performance, a first-rate administrator; but English- the glance he directed towards her would men know what a House of Commons re- have sufficed to chill him into indifferputation is — how fugitive, how little cos-ence. She was not young, and, with mopolitan; and that a German count prominent features and puckered skin, should ever have heard of his father, de- was twisting her face into strange sentilighted and amazed him. In stating him- mental grimaces, as if terribly overcome self to be the son of George Graham by the beauty and pathos of her own Vane, he intimated not only the delight, melodies. To add to Vane's displeasure, but the amaze, with the frank savoir vivre she was dressed in a costume wholly anwhich was one of his salient characteris-tagonistic to his views of the becoming tics.

"Sir," replied the German, speaking in very correct English, but still with his national accent, "every German reared to political service studics England as the school for practical thought distinct from impractical theories. Long may you allow us to do so; only excuse me one remark; never let the selfish element of the practical supersede the generous element. Your father never did so in his speeches, and therefore we admired him. At the present day we don't so much care to study English speeches. They may be insular, they are not European. I honour England; Heaven grant that you may not be making sad mistakes in the belief that you can long remain England you cease to be European." Herewith the German bowed, not uncivilly-on the contrary, somewhat ceremoniously and disappeared with a Prussian Secretary of Embassy, whose arm he linked in his own, into a room less frequented.

if

Vicomte, who and what is your German count?" asked Vane.

"A solemn pedant," answered the lively Vicomte" a German count, que voulezvous de plus?"

-in a Greek jacket of gold and scarlet, contrasted by a Turkish turban.

Muttering "What she-mountebank have we here?" he sank into a chair behind the door, and fell into an absorbed reverie. From this he was aroused by the cessation of the music, and the hum of subdued approbation by which it was followed. Above the hum swelled the imposing voice of M. Louvier, as he rose from a seat on the other side of the piano, by which his bulky form had been partially concealed.

"Bravo! perfectly played excellent! Can we not persuade your charming young countrywoman to gratify us even by a single song?" Then turning aside and addressing some one else invisible to Graham, he said, "Does that tyrannical doctor still compel you to silence, Mademoiselle?"

A voice so sweetly modulated, that if there were any sarcasm in the words it was lost in the softness of pathos, answered, "Nay, M. Louvier, he rather overtasks the words at my command in thankfulness to those who, like yourself, so kindly regard me as something else than a singer."

It was not the she-mountebank who

ment, do sometimes spring up between persons of opposite sexes without the slightest danger of changing its honest character into morbid sentimentality or unlawful passion. The Morleys stopped to accost Graham, but the lady had scarcely said three words to him, before, catching sight of the haunting face, she darted towards it. Her husband, less emotional, bowed at the distance, and said, "To my taste, sir, the Signorina Cicogna is the loveliest girl in the present bee,* and full of mind, sir.”

"Singing mind," said Graham, sarcastically, and in the ill-natured impulse of a man striving to check his inclination to admire.

"I have not heard her sing," replied the American, dryly; "and the words singing mind' are doubtless accurately English, since you employ them; but at Boston the collocation would be deemed barbarous. You fly off the handle. The epithet, sir, is not in concord with the substantive."

thus spoke. Graham rose and looked | from polite flirtation and Platonic attachround with instinctive curiosity. He met the face that he said had haunted him. She too had risen, standing near the piano, with one hand tenderly resting on the she-mountebank's scarlet and gilded shoulder: the face that haunted him, and yet with a difference. There was a faint blush on the clear pale cheek, a soft yet playful light in the grave dark-blue eyes, which had not been visible in the countenance of the young lady in the pearl-coloured robe. Graham did not hear Louvier's reply, though no doubt it was loud enough for him to hear. He sank again into reverie. Other guests now came into the room, among them Frank Morlay, styled Colonel — (eminent | military titles in the States do not always denote eminent military services). a wealthy American, and his sprightly and beautiful wife. The Colonel was a clever man, rather stiff in his deportment, and grave in speech, but by no means without a vein of dry humour. By the French he was esteemed a high-bred specimen of the kind of grand seigneur which democratic republics engender. He spoke French like a Parisian, had an imposing presence, and spent a great deal of money with the elegance of a man of taste and the generosity of a man of heart. His high breeding was not quite so well understood by the English, because the English are apt to judge breeding by little conventional rules not observed by the American Colonel. He had a slight nasal twang, and introduced Sir" with redundant ceremony in addressing Englishmen, however intimate he might be with them, and had the habit (perhaps with a sly intention to startle or puzzle them) of adorning his style of conversation with quaint Americanisms.

Nevertheless, the genial amiability and the inherent dignity of his character made him acknowledged as a thorough gentleman by every Englishman, however conventional in tastes, who became admitted into his intimate acquaintance.

Mrs. Morley, ten or twelve years younger than her husband, had no nasal twang, and employed no Americanisms in her talk, which was frank, lively, and at times eloquent. She had a great ambition to be esteemed of a masculine understanding: Nature unkindly frustrated that ambition in rendering her a model of feminine grace. Graham was intimately acquainted with Colonel Morley; and with Mrs. Morley had contracted one of those cordial friendships which, perfectly free alike

"Boston would be in the right, my dear Colonel. I stand rebuked; mind has little to do with singing."

"I take leave to deny that, sir. You fire into the wrong flock, and would not hazard the remark if you had conversed as I have with Signorina Cicogna."

Before Graham could answer, Signorina Cicogna stood before him leaning lightly on Mrs. Morley's arm.

"Frank, you must take us into the refreshment-room," said Mrs. Morley to her husband; and then, turning to Graham, added, "Will you help to make way for us?"

Graham bowed, and offered his arm to the fair speaker.

"No," said she, taking her husband's. "Of course you know the Signorina, or, as we usually call her, Mademoiselle Cicogna. No? Allow me to present you Mr. Graham Vane- Mademoiselle Cicogna. Mademoiselle speaks English like a

native."

And thus abruptly Graham was introduced to the owner of the haunting face. He had lived too much in the great world all his life to retain the innate shyness of an Englishman, but he certainly was confused and embarrassed when his eyes met Isaura's, and he felt her hand on his arm. Before quitting the room she paused and looked back - Graham's look followed

Bee, a common expression in "the West" for a meeting or gathering of people.

share."

her own, and saw behind them the lady the opinions probably spring that I do with the scarlet jacket escorted by some portly and decorated connoisseur. Isaura's face brightened to another kind of brightness -a pleased and tender light.

Poor dear Madre," she murmured to herself in Italian.

"Indeed? a persuasion, a sentiment, for instance, that a woman should have votes in the choice of legislators, and, I presume, in the task of legislation?"

"No, that is not what I mean. Still, that is an opinion, right or wrong, which "Madre," echoed Graham, also in Ital-grows out of the sentiment I speak of." ian. "I have been misinformed, then: that lady is your mother?"

Isaura laughed a pretty low silvery laugh, and replied in English, "She is not my mother, but I call her Madre, for I know no name more loving." Graham was touched, and said gently, "Your own mother was evidently very dear to you."

Isaura's lip quivered, and she made a slight movement as if she would have withdrawn her hand from his arm. He saw that he had offended or wounded her, and with the straightforward frankness natural to him, resumed quickly

"My remark was impertinent in a stranger; forgive it."

"There is nothing to forgive, Monsieur."

The two now threaded their way through the crowd, both silent. At last Isaura, thinking she ought to speak first in order to show that Graham had not offended her, said

"How lovely Mrs. Morley is!" "Yes, and I like the spirit and ease of her American manner; have you known her long, Mademoiselle?"

"No; we met her for the first time some weeks ago at M. Savarin's."

"Was she very eloquent on the rights of women?"

What! you have heard her on that subject?"

66

Pray explain the sentiment."

"It is always so difficult to define a sentiment, but does it not strike you that in proportion as the tendency of modern civilization has been to raise women more and more to an intellectual equality with men - in proportion as they read and study and think an uneasy sentiment, perhaps querulous, perhaps unreasonable, grows up within their minds that the conventions of the world are against the complete development of the faculties thus aroused and the ambition thus animated; that they cannot but rebel, though it may be silently, against the notions of the former age, when women were not thus educated; notions that the aim of the sex should be to steal through life unremarked; that it is a reproach to be talked of; that women are plants to be kept in a hothouse and forbidden the frank liberty of growth in the natural air and sunshine of heaven. This, at least, is a sentiment which has sprung up within myself, and I imagine that it is the sentiment which has given birth to many of the opinions or doctrines that seem absurd, and very likely are so, to the general public. I don't pretend even to have considered those doctrines. I don't pretend to say what may be the remedies for the restlessness and uneasiness I feel. I doubt if on this earth there be any remedies; all I know is, that I feel restless and uneasy."

"I have rarely heard her on any other, though she is the best and perhaps the Graham gazed on her countenance as cleverest friend I have at Paris; but that she spoke with an astonishment not unmay be my fault, for I like to start it. It mingled with tenderness and compassion is a relief to the languid small-talk of so--astonishment at the contrast between ciety to listen to any one thoroughly in a vein of reflection so hardy, expressed earnest upon turning the world topsy- in a style of language that seemed to him

turvy."

so masculine, and the soft, velvet, dreamy eyes, the gentle tones, and delicate purity of hues rendered younger still by the blush that deepened their bloom.

At this moment they had entered the refreshment-room; but a dense group being round the table, and both perhaps forgetting the object for which Mrs. Morley had introduced them to each other, they had mechanically seated themselves on an ottoman in a recess while Isaura was yet speaking. It must seem as

Are

strange to the reader as it did to Graham more ere we join them - Consult your that such a speech should have been own mind, and consider whether your unspoken by so young a girl to an acquaint- easiness and unrest are caused solely by ance so new. But in truth Isaura was conventional shackles on your sex. very little conscious of Graham's pres- they not equally common to the youth of ence. She had got on a subject that per- ours? common to all who seek in art, perplexed and tormented her solitary in letters, nay, in the stormier field of acthoughts-she was but thinking aloud. tive life, to clasp as a reality some image yet seen but as a dream?"

Do

CHAPTER VIII.

No further conversation in the way of sustained dialogue took place that evening between Graham and Isaura.

"Now, Mr. Vane, you have no option but to take care of me to the shawlroom."

"I believe," said Graham, after a pause, "that I comprehend your sentiment much better than I do Mrs. Morley's opinions; but permit me one observation. You say, truly, that the course of modern civilization has more or less affected the relative position of woman cultivated beyond that The Americans and the Savarins cluslevel on which she was formerly contented tered round Isaura when they quitted the to stand the nearer perhaps to the refreshment-room. The party was breakheart of man because not lifting her head ing up. Vane would have offered his arm to his height; and hence a sense of again to Isaura, but M. Savarin had forerestlessness, uneasiness. But do you stalled him. The American was desuppose that, in this whirl and dance of spatched by his wife to see for the carthe atoms which compose the rolling ball riage; and Mrs. Morley said, with her of the civilized world, it is only women wonted sprightly tone of command, that are made restless and uneasy? you not see, amid the masses congregated in the weathiest cities of the world, writhings and struggles against the received order of things? In this sentiment of discontent there is a certain truthfulness, because it is an element of human nature; and how best to deal with it is a problem yet unsolved. But in the opinions and doctrines to which, among the masses, the sentiment gives birth, the wisdom of the wisest detects only the certainty of a common ruin, offering for reconstruction the same building materials as the former edifice materials not likely to be improved because they may be defaced. Ascend from the working classes to all others in which civilized culture prevails, and you will find that same restless feelingthe fluttering of untried wings against the "It is natural for an American to think bars between wider space and their long-so. Every child that has just learned to ings. Could you poll all the educated speak uses bolder expressions than_its ambitious young men in England - per- grandmamma; but I am rather at a loss haps in Europe at least half of them, to know by what novelty of phrase an divided between a reverence for the past American would have answered your and a curiosity as to the future, would question." sigh, 'I am born a century too late or a century too soon!""

Isaura listened to this answer with a profound and absorbing interest. It was the first time that a clever young man talked thus sympathetically to her, a clever young girl.

Madame Savarin and Signora Venosta had each found their cavaliers, the Italian still retaining hold of the portly connoisseur, and the Frenchwoman accepting the safeguard of the Vicomte de Brézé. As they descended the stairs, Mrs. Morley asked Graham what he thought of the young lady to whom she had presented him.

"I think she is charming," answered Graham.

"Of course; that is the stereotyped answer to all such questions, especially by you Englishmen. In public or in private, England is the mouthpiece of platitudes."

"An American would have discovered that Isaura Cicogna had a soul, and his answer would have confessed it."

"It strikes me that he would then have uttered a platitude more stolid than mine. Every Christian knows that the dullest human being has a soul. But, to speak Then rising, he said, "I see your frankly, I grant that my answer did not do Madre and our American friends are dart- justice to the Signorina, nor to the iming angry looks at me. They have made pression she makes on me; and putting room for us at the table, and are wonder- aside the charm of the face, there is a ing why I should keep you thus from the charm in a mind that seems to have gathgood things of this little life. One wordered stores of reflection which I should