r her vanity or minister to her
self-esteem.

When Sir Horace was presented to her as an Attache, she simply bowed and
smiled. He renewed his acquaintance some ten years later as a Secretary,
when she vouchsafed to say she remembered him. A third time, after a
lapse of years, he came before her as a Charge d'Affaires, when she
conversed with him; and lastly, when time had made him a Minister, and
with less generosity had laid its impress upon herself, she gave him her
hand, and said,--

"My dear Horace, how charming to see an old friend, if you will be good
enough to let me call you so."

And he was so; he accepted the friendship as frankly as it was
proffered. He knew that time was when he could have no pretension to
this distinction: but the beautiful Princess was no longer young; the
fascinations she had wielded were already a kind of Court tradition;
archdukes and ambassadors were no more her slaves; nor was she the
terror of jealous queens and Court favorites. Sir Horace knew all this;
but he also knew that, she being such, his ambition had never dared
to aspire to her friendship, and it was only in her days of declining
fortune that he could hope for such distinction.

All this may seem very strange and very odd, dear reader; but we live
in very strange and very odd times, and more than one-half the world
is only living on "second-hand,"--second-hand shawls and second-hand
speeches, second-hand books, and Court suits and opinions are all rife;
and why not second-hand friendships?

Now, the friendship between a bygone beauty of forty--and we will not
say how many more years--and a hackneyed, half-disgusted man of the
world, of the same age, is a very curious contract. There is no love
in it; as little is there any strong tie of esteem: but there is a
wonderful bond of self-interest and mutual convenience. Each seems to
have at last found "one that understands him;" similarity of pursuit
has engendered similarity of taste. They have each seen the world from
exactly the same point of view, and they have come out of it equally
heart-wearied and tired, stored with vast resources of social knowledge,
and with a keen insight into every phase of that complex machinery by
which one-half the world cheats the other.

Madame de Sabloukoff was still handsome; she had far more than what
is ill-naturedly called the remains of good looks. She had a brilliant
complexion, lustrous dark eyes, and a profusion of the most beaut