s by a few more glasses of wine;
for which end he sat down at table with the other gentlemen, whilst
Angelica and her mother, being upset by what had happened, withdrew.

The Colonel was greatly annoyed at this silly trick, as he called it,
of Marguerite's, and Moritz and Dagobert felt very eery and uncanny
over the whole affair; but the more out of tune they were the more did
the Count give the rein to a joviality which had never been seen in him
before, and which, in sober truth, had a certain amount of gruesomeness
about it.

"This Count," Dagobert said to Moritz, as they walked away, "has a
something most eerily repugnant to me about him, in some strange
inexplicable way. I cannot help a feeling that there must be something
exceedingly mysterious connected with him."

"Ah!" said Moritz, "there is a weight as of lead on my heart. I am
filled with a dim foreboding that some dark mischance threatens my
love."

That night the Colonel was aroused from sleep by a courier from the
Residenz. Next morning he came to his wife, looking rather pale, and
constraining himself to a calmness which he was far from feeling, said,
"We have to be parted again, dearest child. There's going to be another
campaign, after this little bit of a rest. I shall have to march off
with the regiment as soon as ever I can, perhaps this evening."

Madame von G---- was greatly startled; she broke out into bitter
weeping. The Colonel said, by way of consolation, that he felt sure
this campaign would end as gloriously as the last--that he felt in such
admirable spirits about it that he was certain nothing could go amiss.
"What you had better do," he said, "is, take Angelica with you to the
country-house, and stay there till we send the enemy to the rightabout
again. I am providing you with a companion who will keep you amused,
and prevent your feeling lonely. Count S---- is going with you."

"What!" cried Madame von G----. "Good heavens! the Count to go with
us!--Angelica's rejected lover--that deceitful Italian, who is hiding
his annoyance in the bottom of his heart, only to bring it out in
fullest force at the first proper opportunity; this Count who--I cannot
say why--seems more intensely antipathetic to me since yesterday than
ever?"

"Good God!" the Colonel cried; "there really is no bearing with the
nonsensical ideas--the silly dreams--which your sex gets into its head.
The magnanimity of soul of a man of his firmness and fineness of
cha