at once said to myself, "No!
this is not, this cannot be, Caroline Graham."

We conversed but little during dinner. She evidently did not speak
French willingly, and my Italian had been too long in rust for fluency.
Of English she shewed not the least knowledge. There were stories told
in her hearing, at some of which to avoid laughter would have been
scarcely possible, and still she never smiled once. If I wanted any
additional evidence that she was not of English origin, chance presented
one, as she was referred to by the Russian for the name of a certain
Sicilian family where a "vendetta" had been preserved for two entire
centuries; and the Countess replied, with a slight blush, "The Marquis
of Bianconetti--my uncle."

I own that, while it was with a sense of relief I learned to believe
that the Countess was not the sister of my poor friend, I still could
not help feeling something akin to disappointment at the discovery. I
felt as though I had been heaping up a store of care and anxiety around
me for one I had never seen before, and for whom I could really take
no deep interest. One husbands their affections as they grow older.
The spendthrift habit of caring for people without even knowing why, or
asking wherefore, which is one of the pastimes--and sometimes a right
pleasant one, too--of youth, becomes rarer as we go further on in life,
till at last we grow to be as grudging of our esteem as of our gold, and
lend neither, save on good interest and the best security. Bad health
has done for me the work of time, and I am already oppressed and weary
of the evils of age.

Something, perhaps, of this kind--some chagrin, too, that the Countess
was not my old acquaintance" though, Heaven knows, it had grieved me
far more to know she had been--some discontent with myself for being
discontented--or "any other reason why,"--but so was it, I felt what in
fashionable slang is called "put out," and, in consequence, resolved
to leave the party and make my way homeward at the first favourable
opportunity. Before setting out I had determined, as the night would be
moonlit, to make a slight _detour_, and thus avoid all the _fracas_ and
tumult of driving home in a mob; and, with this intention, had ordered
my phaeton to meet me in the Mourg-Thal, at a small inn, whither I
should repair on foot, and then make my tour back by the Castle of
Eberstein.

A move of the company to take coffee on a rock beside the Waterfall gave
me th