don't think I shall tell you that, General; you intend a surprise,
and are meditating the particular point of attack.'

"'At all events, you won't deny this,' I said, 'that being honored by
your permission to converse, I ought to know how to address you. Shall I
say Madame la Comtesse?'

"She laughed, and she would, no doubt, have met me with another
evasion--if, indeed, I can treat any occurrence in an interview every
circumstance of which was prearranged, as I now believe, with the
profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by accident.

"'As to that,' she began; but she was interrupted, almost as she opened
her lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked particularly
elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, that his face was the
most deadly pale I ever saw, except in death. He was in no
masquerade--in the plain evening dress of a gentleman; and he said,
without a smile, but with a courtly and unusually low bow:--

"'Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to say a very few words which may
interest her?'

"The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token of
silence; she then said to me, 'Keep my place for me, General; I shall
return when I have said a few words.'

"And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little aside
with the gentleman in black, and talked for some minutes, apparently
very earnestly. They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and
I lost them for some minutes.

"I spent the interval in cudgeling my brains for a conjecture as to the
identity of the lady who seemed to remember me so kindly, and I was
thinking of turning about and joining in the conversation between my
pretty ward and the Countess's daughter, and trying whether, by the time
she returned, I might not have a surprise in store for her, by having
her name, title, chateau, and estates at my fingers' ends. But at this
moment she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said:

"'I shall return and inform Madame la Comtesse when her carriage is at
the door.'

"He withdrew with a bow."

XII

_A Petition_

"'Then we are to lose Madame la Comtesse, but I hope only for a few
hours,' I said, with a low bow.

"'It may be that only, or it may be a few weeks. It was very unlucky his
speaking to me just now as he did. Do you now know me?'

"I assured her I did not.

"'You shall know me,' she said, 'but not at present. We are older and
better friends than, perhaps, you suspec