always have surprise to think
that you are an American, and will not let me make you a great lady."

She ignored this speech in its entirety.

"To think," she pursued, "that one cannot travel in a daughterly way
with a gentleman of seventy without--"

"Yes," he interrupted, "but that is why it is best not to travel in the
charge of gentlemen. One is always so liable to be disagreeably urged to
become a marchioness."

She assented with a thoughtful nod.

"I don't answer all his letters," she said; "I burn them."

"Poor marquis!"

"They are good letters of their kind; but there are a whole lot of
things which it does not pay to write to a widow. You can fool a girl,
but a widow always knows."

"Does a widow always know?"

"Oh, dear me; yes."

"Then why did you not save the poor marquis his pain?"

"I never dreamed of his feeling that way. How could I? I only thought he
was delightful. And always, even the first day at Madame de S----'s,
when he said adieu he would kiss my hands in the most adorable Louis
XIV. kind of a way."

"And all the while it was in his heart a plot to marry you. You see!"

"Men are so queer," she reflected; "I cannot see why that old gentleman
should have wanted to marry me."

"I can," said Von Ibn, dryly; "I can see quite well."

The marquis as a topic of conversation seemed at an end. They were in
the Hellerstrasse, going towards the river, and the heaviness which the
Isar always cast over her fell down about her spirits.

"Oh, I _cannot_ believe that in forty-eight hours I shall be gone!" she
exclaimed suddenly.

"Do not go," he said, tightening his hold upon her arm again; "stay with
me."

"I must go," she declared. "I couldn't stay with you, anyway," she
added, in a tone of unintended mournfulness.

His mood altered, and the light of a street lamp showed that every tinge
of gayety had fled his face.

"You have no will of your own," he said with acerbity; "that Jack has it
all. I find you so very weak."

She raised her eyes to his and they looked strangely at one another. The
moon was above them, full and beautiful, and the Isar rapids were
murmuring their far cry.

"We shall return over the Ludwigsbrucke," he said, and they went down
the incline in silence.

She thought vaguely, "I am here now, and _he_ is here! How will it be
when I am gone and we are separated forever?" But her brain refused to
comprehend--only her heart felt the warmth of his touch upon her sle