own there, some eight or nine months ago, the
young Count Wahnsdorf, the Archduchess Sophia's son, who, having got
into all manner of dissipation at Vienna, and lost largely at play,
it was judged expedient to exile him for a season; and as the Duke of
Modena offered his aid to their plans, he was named to a troop in a
dragoon regiment, and appointed aide-de-camp to his Royal Highness. Are
you attending; or has your Excellency lost the clew of my story?"

"I am all ears; only waiting anxiously to hear: who is she?"

"Oh, then, you suspect a woman in the case?"

"I am sure of it, dear Princess. The very accents of your voice prepared
me for a bit of romance."

"Yes, you are right; he has fallen in love,--so desperately in love
that he is incessant in his appeals to the Duchess to intercede with his
family and grant him leave to marry."

"To marry whom?" asked Sir Horace.

"That's the very question which he cannot answer himself; and when
pressed for information, can only reply that 'she is an angel.' Now,
angels are not always of good family; they have sometimes very humble
parents, and very small fortunes."

"_Helas!_" sighed the diplomatist, pitifully.

"This angel, it would seem, is untraceable. She arrived with her mother,
or what is supposed to be her mother, from Corsica; they landed at
Spezzia, with an English passport, calling them Madame and Mademoiselle
Harley. On arriving at Massa they took a villa close to the town, and
established themselves with all the circumstance of people well-off as
to means. They, however, neither received visits nor made acquaintance
with any one. They even so far withdrew themselves from public view
that they rarely left their own grounds, and usually took their
carriage-airing at night. You are not attending, I see."

"On the contrary, I am an eager listener; only, it is a story one has
heard so often. I never heard of any one preserving the incognito except
where disclosure would have revealed a shame."

"Your Excellency mistakes," replied she; "the incognito is sometimes,
like a feigned despatch in diplomacy, a means of awakening curiosity."

"_Ces ruses ne se font plus_, Princess,--they were the fashion in
Talleyrand's time; now we are satisfied to mystify by no meaning."

"If the weapons of the old school are not employed, there is another
reason, perhaps," said she, with a dubious smile.

"That modern arms are too feeble to wield them, you mean," said he,
bowing