iting them. Kengyelesy was a little puny bit
of a man with very light bright hair, white eyelashes, and a pointed
chin made still more pointed by a long goatish beard. It always pleased
him very much when his friends confidentially assured him that he had a
perfect satyr-like countenance.

His wife was a young, chubby, lively lady with smiling blue eyes
unacquainted with sorrow, whom her husband on the occasion of a _bal
pare_ at Vienna had seen, fallen in love with, and carried off, although
the girl's father, a retired Field-marshal, was quite ready to surrender
her--they preferred, however, the romance of an elopement.

The countess received her lady-guest with the most effusive heartiness,
called her by her Christian name on the spot, and invited her to do that
same with her. She told Henrietta she was to feel quite at home, dragged
her all over the castle, and showed her in rapid succession her rare
flowers, her Parisian furniture, her Japanese curiosities; played
something for her on the piano, made her parrot talk to her and
incontinently popped on her finger a large and beautiful opal ring,
which she told her she was to keep as an eternal souvenir.

Then the countess seized the hand of the child-wife and led her into her
bed-chamber. On the wall hung a fine large battle-piece, a splendid oil
painting by a Viennese master.

"A magnificent picture, is it not?" enquired the countess with a broad
smile.

"Yes," replied Henrietta absently.

"How do you like the central figure? I mean the hero on horseback with
the standard in his hand?"

"He is handsome, but it seems to me that, situated as he is, he smiles
too much."

The countess laughed loudly at this remark.

"That," said she, "is the portrait of a young hussar officer who for a
long time paid his court to me. I could not, of course, keep his
portrait in my room, for there everyone would know all about it, so I
had a battle-piece painted in all round, and nobody suspects anything.
Oh! my friend, if women were not so inventive, they would often be very
unhappy. But that, mind! is a secret; not a soul must know about it."

Henrietta grew pensive. She also had her secret, but she would tell it
to nobody, not even on her death-bed. She also had a portrait written in
ineffaceable characters in her heart, yet between him and her stand two
infinite obstacles, the one a betrayed star whose name is Mesarthim, the
other that unbetrayable thing, whose name is--w