shall only make my compliments
to the hostess and dance one set at each. I never do more except when I
come here."

A few days later I asked Helen, "Have you made up your mind what answer
to give M. Vergniaud? He intends to write to your father. He was
speaking to me about it again to-day."

"I won't have him writing to my father," she replied with her wonted
impetuosity. "I will not have my father worried about nothing. It would
be a month before I could set it right."

"He seems to be very much in love with you. He says he shall be in
despair, wretched for ever, if you reject him."

"So they all say. I don't believe a word of it, and I can't help it if
they are. I can't marry more than one of them, and I don't believe I
shall ever marry anybody. I won't be persecuted to death."

The little princess was irritated. Something had evidently gone wrong.
It soon came out: "I had a letter from Fred this morning--a very
disagreeable letter."

"Indeed! You have not yet answered it, I suppose."

"No: he will have to write differently from that before he gets any
answer from me. I am not going to be lessoned and scolded as if I were a
little girl. Father never does it, and I will not submit to it from
_him_" After a pause: "He is not so much to blame. It is that
odious Mr. Wilkins, who keeps writing to him how much attention I
receive, and all that. As if I could help it! Poor old Fred! We have
known each other ever since we were children."

That explains it, I thought. "Helen, if you have decided to say no to M.
Vergniaud, the sooner you say it the better."

"I have said it, and he doesn't mind it in the least. I wish you would
tell him: you always speak so that people know you are in earnest and
can't help believing you."

"Very well, Helen. I will ask Madame Le Fort to tell him that his suit
is hopeless, and that he must not annoy you by persisting in it."

Early in February the Belgian ambassador, M. le comte de Beyens, and
Madame la comtesse, kindly took charge of Miss St. Clair to the imperial
ball at the Tuileries. She had never looked more charming than in the
exquisite costume of pale rose-colored faille, with a floating mist of
white tulle, caught here and there by rosebuds that might have grown in
Chrimhild's garden. The airy figure, so graceful in every motion, the
well-poised head with its flutter of shining curls, the wonderful dark
eyes, the perfect eyebrows, the delicious little mouth where love seem