approves of your
trip to England?"

The prince only smiled, for he was of a silent disposition, and
therefore wonderfully well suited his traveling companion.

"Poor Madame de Harestein!" exclaimed Count Frill. "What despair she was
in when you left Vienna, my dear duke. Ah! _mon Dieu!_ I did what I
could to amuse her. I used to take my guitar, and sing to her morning
and night, but without the least effect. She certainly would have died
of a broken heart, if it had not been for the dancing-dogs."

"The dancing-dogs!" minced the pseudo Lady Aphrodite. "How shocking!"

"Did they bite her?" asked Lady Squib, "and so inoculate her with
gayety?"

"Oh! the dancing-dogs, my dear ladies! everybody was mad about the
dancing-dogs. They came from Peru, and danced the mazurka in green
jackets with a _jabot!_ Oh! what a _jabot!_"

"I dislike animals excessively," remarked Mrs. Annesley.

"Dislike the dancing-dogs!" said Count Frill. "Ah, my good lady, you
would have been enchanted. Even the kaiser fed them with pistachio nuts.
Oh, so pretty! delicate leetle things, soft shining little legs, and
pretty little faces! so sensible, and with such _jabots!_"

"I assure you, they were excessively amusing," said the prince, in a
soft, confidential undertone to his neighbor, Mrs. Montfort, who,
admiring his silence, which she took for state, smiled and bowed with
fascinating condescension.

"And what else has happened very remarkable, count, since I left you?"
asked Lord Darrell.

"Nothing, nothing, my dear Darrell. This _betise_ of a war has made us
all serious. If old Clamstandt had not married that gipsy little
Dugiria, I really think I should have taken a turn to Belgrade."

"You should not eat so much, poppet," drawled Charles Annesley to the
Spaniard.

"Why not?" said the little French lady, with great animation, always
ready to fight anybody's battle, provided she could get an opportunity
to talk. "Why not, Mr. Annesley? You never will let anybody eat--I never
eat myself, because every night, having to talk so much, I am dry, dry,
dry--so I drink, drink, drink. It is an extraordinary thing that there
is no language which makes you so thirsty as French. I always have heard
that all the southern languages, Spanish and Italian, make you hungry."

"What can be the reason?" seriously asked the pseudo Lady Afy.

"Because there is so much salt in it," said Lord Squib.

"Delia," drawled Mr. Annesley, "you look very pretty