o, with a scowl
on his darkling brows. "Mon Dieu, que ces cigarres sont mauvais!" he
added as he too cast away his Cuba.

"Try one of my Pickwicks," said Franklin Fox, with a sneer, offering
his gold etui to the young Frenchman; "they are some of Pontet's best,
Prince. What, do you bear malice? Come, let us be friends," said the gay
and careless young patrician; but a scowl on the part of the Frenchman
was the only reply.

"Want to know who she is? Borodino knows who she is, Bagnigge," the wag
went on.

Everybody crowded around Monsieur de Borodino thus apostrophized. The
Marquis of Alicompayne, young De Boots of the Lifeguards, Tom Protocol
of the Foreign Office; the gay young Peers, Farintosh, Poldoody, and the
rest; and Bagnigge, for a wonder, not less eager than any one present.

"No, he will tell you nothing about her. Don't you see he has gone off
in a fury!" Franklin Fox continued. "He has his reasons, ce cher prince:
he will tell you nothing; but I will. You know that I am au mieux with
the dear old duchess."

"They say Frank and she are engaged after the duke's death," cried
Poldoody.

"I always thought Fwank was the duke's illicit gweatgwandson," drawled
out De Boots.

"I heard that he doctored her Blenheim, and used to bring her wigs from
Paris," cried that malicious Tom Protocol, whose mots are known in every
diplomatic salon from Petersburg to Palermo.

"Burn her wigs and hang her poodle!" said Bagnigge. "Tell me about this
girl, Franklin Fox."

"In the first place, she has five hundred thousand acres, in a ring
fence in Norfolk; a county in Scotland, a castle in Wales, a villa at
Richmond, a corner house in Belgrave Square, and eighty thousand a year
in the three-per-cents."

"Apres?" said Bagnigge, still yawning.

"Secondly, Borodino lui fait la cour. They are cousins, her mother was
an Armagnac of the emigration; the old Marshal, his father, married
another sister. I believe he was footman in the family, before Napoleon
princified him."

"No, no, he was second coachman," Tom Protocol good-naturedly
interposed--"a cavalry officer, Frank, not an infantry man."

"'Faith you should have seen his fury (the young one's, I mean) when
he found me in the duchess's room this evening, tete-a-tete with the
heiress, who deigned to receive a bouquet from this hand."

"It cost me three guineas," poor Frank said, with a shrug and a sigh,
"and that Covent Garden scoundrel gives no credit: but she took