height of her speed, stood erect, pawing the air with her
forelegs, and flinging the white froth over her withers, while she
plunged blindly in her nervous terror; then with a crash, her feet came
down upon the ground, the broken harness shivered together with a sharp,
metallic clash; snorting, panting, quivering, trembling, the pair stood
passive and vanquished.

The carriage was overthrown; but the high and fearless courage of the
peeress bore her unharmed, even as she was flung out on to the yielding
fern-grown turf. Fair as she was in every hour, she had never looked
fairer than as he swung himself from the now powerless horses and threw
himself beside her.

"My love--my love, you are saved!"

The beautiful eyes looked up, half unconscious; the danger told on her
now that it was passed, as it does most commonly with women.

"Saved!--lost! All the world must know, now, that you are with me this
evening," she murmured with a shudder. She lived for the world, and her
first thought was of self.

He soothed her tenderly.

"Hush--be at rest! There is no injury but what I can repair, nor is
there a creature in sight to have witnessed the accident. Trust in me;
no one shall ever know of this. You shall reach town safely and alone."

And, while he promised, he forgot that he thus pledged his honor to
leave four hours of his life so buried that, however much he needed, he
neither should nor could account for them.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PAINTED BIT.

Baden was at its brightest. The Victoria, the Badischer Hof, the
Stephanie Bauer were crowded. The Kurliste had a dazzling string of
names. Imperial grandeur sauntered in slippers; chiefs, used to be
saluted with "Ave Caesar Imperator," smoked a papelito in peace over
"Galignani." Emperors gave a good-day to ministers who made their
thrones beds of thorns, and little kings elbowed great capitalists who
could have bought them all up in a morning's work in the money market.
Statecraft was in its slippers and diplomacy in its dressing-gown.
Statesmen who had just been outwitting each other at the hazard of
European politics laughed good-humoredly as they laid their gold down on
the color. Rivals who had lately been quarreling over the knotty points
of national frontiers now only vied for a twenty-franc rosebud from the
bouquetiere. Knights of the Garter and Knights of the Golden Fleece,
who had hated each other to deadliest rancor with the length of the
Continent between