hange of countenance did not last long. Evidently thought, though
intense for the moment, was not habitual to the man; evidently he had
lived the life which takes all things lightly,--so he rose with a look
of fatigue, shook and stretched himself, as if to cast off, or grow
out of, an unwelcome and irksome mood. An hour afterwards, the Count of
Peschiera was charming all eyes, and pleasing all ears, in the saloon of
a high-born beauty, whose acquaintance he had made at Vienna, and whose
charms, according to that old and never-truth-speaking oracle, Polite
Scandal, were now said to have attracted to London the brilliant
foreigner.

CHAPTER III.

The marehesa regained her house, which was in Curzon Street, and
withdrew to her own room, to readjust her dress, and remove from her
countenance all trace of the tears she had shed.

Half an hour afterwards she was seated in her drawing-room, composed and
calm; nor, seeing her then, could you have guessed that she was capable
of so much emotion and so much weakness. In that stately exterior, in
that quiet attitude, in that elaborate and finished elegance which comes
alike from the arts of the toilet and the conventional repose of rank,
you could see but the woman of the world and the great lady.

A knock at the door was heard, and in a few moments there entered a
visitor, with the easy familiarity of intimate acquaintance,--a young
man, but with none of the bloom of youth. His hair, fine as a woman's,
was thin and scanty, but it fell low over the forehead, and concealed
that noblest of our human features. "A gentleman," says Apuleius, "ought
to wear his whole mind on his forehead." The young visitor would never
have committed so frank an imprudence. His cheek was pale, and in his
step and his movements there was a languor that spoke of fatigued nerves
or delicate health. But the light of the eye and the tone of the voice
were those of a mental temperament controlling the bodily,--vigorous and
energetic. For the rest, his general appearance was distinguished by
a refinement alike intellectual and social. Once seen, you would not
easily forget him; and the reader, no doubt, already recognizes
Randal Leslie. His salutation, as I before said, was that of intimate
familiarity; yet it was given and replied to with that unreserved
openness which denotes the absence of a more tender sentiment.

Seating himself by the marchesa's side, Randal began first to converse
on the fash