y. She could not understand Kosmaroff,
any more than she could understand Cartoner. And it was natural that she
should, in consequence, give much thought to them both. There was,
she felt, something in both alike which she had not got at, and she
naturally wanted to get at it. It might be a sorrow, and her kind heart
drew her attention to any hidden thought that might be a sorrow. She
might be able to alleviate it. At any rate, being a woman, she, no
doubt, wanted to stir it up, as it were, and see what the result would
be.

Prince Martin was quite different. He was comparatively easy to
understand. She knew the symptoms well. She was so unfortunate. So many
people had fallen in love with her, through no fault of her own. Indeed,
no one could regret it more than she did. She did not, of course, say
these things to her aunt, Julie, or to that dear old blind stupid, her
uncle, who never saw or understood anything, and was entirely absorbed
in his cigars and his newspapers. She said them to herself--and, no
doubt, found herself quite easy to convince--as other people do.

Prince Martin was very gay and light-hearted, too. If he was in love, he
was gayly, frankly, openly in love, and she hoped that it would be all
right--whatever that might mean. In the mean time, of course, she could
not help it if she was always meeting him when she went for her walk
in the Saski Gardens. There was nowhere else to walk, and it was to be
supposed that he was passing that way by accident. Or if he had found
out her hours and came there on purpose she really could not help it.

Deulin came and went during the winter. He seemed to have business now
at Cracow, now at St. Petersburg. He was a bad correspondent, and talked
much about himself, without ever saying much; which is quite a
different thing. He had the happy gift of imparting a wealth of useless
information. When in Warsaw he busied himself on behalf of the ladies,
and went so far as to take Miss Mangles for a drive in his sleigh. To
Netty he showed a hundred attentions.

"I cannot understand," she said, "why everybody is so kind to me."

"It is because you are so kind to everybody," he answered, with that air
of appearing to mean more than he said, which he seemed to reserve for
Netty.

"I do not understand Mr. Deulin," said Netty to her uncle one day. "Why
does he stay here? What is he doing here?"

And Joseph P. Mangles merely stuck his chin forward, and said in his
deepest