ple. Thirst for it is common during
youth: and one would think the French mother worthy of the crown of
wisdom if she were not so scrupulously provident in excluding love from
the calculations on behalf of her girl.

Say (for Diana's mists are impenetrable and freeze curiosity) that
Clotilde was walking with Count Constantine, the brilliant Tartar trained
in Paris, when first she met Prince Marko Romaris, at the Hungarian Baths
on the borders of the Styrian highlands. The scene at all events is
pretty, and weaves a fable out of a variety of floating threads. A
stranger to the Baths, dressed in white and scarlet, sprang from his
carriage into a group of musical gypsies round an inn at the arch of the
chestnut avenue, after pulling up to listen to them for a while. The
music had seized him. He snatched bow and fiddle from one of the ring,
and with a few strokes kindled their faces. Then seating himself, on a
bench he laid the fiddle on his knee, and pinched the strings and flung
up his voice, not ceasing to roll out the spontaneous notes when Clotilde
and her cavalier, and other couples of the party, came nigh; for he was
on the tide of the song, warm in it, and loved it too well to suffer
intruders to break the flow, or to think of them. They were close by when
the last of it rattled (it was a popular song of a fiery tribe) to its
finish: He rose and saluted Clotilde, smiled and jumped back to his
carriage, sending a cry of adieu to the swarthy, lank-locked,
leather-hued circle, of which his dark oriental eyes and skin of
burnished walnut made him look an offshoot, but one of the celestial
branch.

He was in her father's reception-room when she reached home: he was
paying a visit of ceremony on behalf of his family to General von
Rudiger; which helped her to remember that he had been expected, and also
that his favourite colours were known to be white and scarlet. In those
very colours, strange to tell, Clotilde was dressed; Prince Marko had
recognized her by miraculous divination, he assured her he could have
staked his life on the guess as he bowed to her. Adieu to Count
Constantine. Fate had interposed the prince opportunely, we have to
suppose, for she received a strong impression of his coming straight from
her invisible guardian; and the stroke was consequently trenchant which
sent the conquering Tartar raving of her fickleness. She struck, like
fate, one blow. She discovered that the prince, in addition to his be