replied the girl, but she still seemed to be lost in a kind of reverie. Her gaze was fixed--her full crimson lips were slightly parted--her slender hands kept nervously clasping and unclasping each other.

“Well, you are ’andsome and no mistake!” exclaimed the Baroness. “You remind me a little of the Duchess of Bewlay before she was married! The first wife, I mean--the second is a poor, pale-faced, sandy-’aired creature. (’Ow the Dook can stomach ’er after the other, I can’t make out!) The first Duchess’s mother was a great flame of my grandfather, the Dook of--however, I mustn’t tell you that! It’s a State secret, and I might get into trouble at Court! You’d better not say I mentioned it.”

But Harriet Brandt was not in a condition to remember or repeat anything. She was lost in a dream of the possibilities of the Future.

The bell for _déjeuner_ roused them at last, and brought them to their feet. They resembled each other in one particular ... they were equally fond of the pleasures of the table.

The little Baron appeared dutifully to afford his clumsy spouse the benefit of his support in climbing the hillocks of shifting sand, which lay between them and the hotel, and Miss Brandt sped swiftly on her way alone.

“I’ve been ’aving a talk with that gal Brandt,” chuckled the Baroness to her husband, “she’s a regular green-’orn and swallows everything you tell ’er. I’ve been stuffing ’er up, that she ought to marry a Prince, with ’er looks and money, and she quite believes it. But she ain’t bad-looking when she colours up, and I expect she’s rather a warm customer, and if she takes a fancy to a man, ’e won’t well know ’ow to get out of it! And if he tries to, she’ll make the fur fly. Ha! ha! ha!”

“Better leave it alone, better leave it alone!” said the stolid German, who had had more than one battle to fight already, on account of his wife’s match-making propensities, and considered her quite too clumsy an artificer to engage in so delicate a game.

CHAPTER V.

There was a marked difference observable in the manner of Harriet Brandt after her conversation with the Baroness. Hitherto she had been shy and somewhat diffident--the seclusion of her conventual life and its religious teachings had cast a veil, as it were, between her and the outer world, and she had not known how to behave, nor how much she might venture to do, on being first cast upon it. But Madame Gobelli’s 

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