The Europeans

egree, to Mr. Wentworth, a perturbing fact, for he had no sense of competing with his young kinsman for Eugenia's good graces. Madame Münster's un

et." Mr. Wentworth was not a man to admit to himself that-his paternal duties apart-he liked any individual much better than all other individuals; but he thought Robert Acton extremely judicious; and this was perhaps as near an approach as he was capable of to the eagerness of preference, which his temperament repudiated as it would have disengaged itself from something slightly unchaste. Acton was, in fact, very judicious-and something more beside; and indeed it must be claimed for Mr. Wentworth that in the more illicit parts of his preference there hovered the vague adumbration of a belief that his cousin's final merit was a certain enviable capacity for whistling, rather gallantly, at the sanctions of mere judgment-for showing a larger courage, a finer quality of pluck, than common occasion demanded. Mr. Wentworth would never have risked the intimation that Acton was made, in the smallest degree, of the stuff of a hero; but this is small blame to him, for Robert would certainly never have risked it himself. Acton certainly exercised great discretion in all things-beginning with his estimate of himself. He knew that he was by no means so much of a man of the world as he wa

the world!" she said to him three or four weeks after she had installed herself. "I am certain you are wondering about my motives. They are very pure." The Baro

different colors attached to them, and Acton was always playing with one. "No, I don't find it at all strange," he said slowly, smilin

y prenez mal. In certain moods there is nothing I am not capable of agr

t like this-not even in China. He was ashamed, for inscrutable reasons, of the vivacity of his emotion, and he carried it off, superficially, by taking, still superficially, the humorous view of Madame Münster. It was not at all true that he thought it very natural of her to have made this pious pilgrimage. It might have been said of him in advance that he was too good a Bostonian to regard in the light of an eccentricity the desire of even the remotest alien to visit the New England metropolis. This was an impulse for which, surely, no apology was needed; and Madame Münster was the fortunate possessor of several New England cousins. In fact, however, Madame Münster struck him as out of keeping with her little circle; she was at the best a ve

laces," she said; "a formidable list. Charlotte Wentworth has written it out for me, in a terrifically distinct hand. There is no ambiguity on the subject; I know perfectly where I must go. Mr. Wentworth informs me tha

id Acton, "but you don't tell

fort. It is not inspiring. Wouldn't that serve as an excuse, in Boston? I am told they are very sincere; they don't tell fibs. And then Felix ought to go with me, and he is never in readiness. I

a few people," said Acton. "You are having a very

for. Amusement? I have had amusement. And as for seeing people-I have already seen a great many in my life

. She was a woman who took being looked at remarkab

et that are really the best: to come away, to change, to break with everything. When once

time on the way!" s

had time, since I got here, to ask myself why I came. However, I never ask my

ll see the difficulties

n my path?" she asked, rearrang

ll-that of having

Don't be too sure. I have left some

"but it was to com

rude; but, honestly speaking, I did not. No," the Baroness pursue

e as me?" c

which I knew I should find here. Over there I had only, as I

me," said Acton. "I suppose

lared the Baroness;

relation of a lady and a gentleman ma

ay be natural or not. And at any rate," re

nd so much younger. It was not to be imagined that she should have a flirtation with Clifford, who was a mere shame-faced boy, and whom a large section of Boston society supposed to be "engaged" to Lizzie Acton. Not, indeed, that it was to be conceived that the Baroness was a possible party to any flirtation whate

h a wild country, and in a companion who from time to time made the vehicle dip, with a motion like a swallow's flight, over roads of primitive construction, and who, as she felt, would do a great many things that she might ask him. Sometimes, for a couple of hours together, there were almost no houses

wilderness of woods, and the gleam of a distant river, and a glimpse of half the hill-tops in Massachusetts. The road had a wide, grassy margin, on the further side of which there flowed a deep, clear brook; there were wild flowers in the grass, and beside the brook lay the trunk of a fallen tree. Acton w

r away-a state of affairs to which even indirect reference was to be deprecated. It was true, nevertheless, that the Baroness herself had often alluded to Silberstadt; and Acton had often wondered why her husband wished to get rid of her. It was a curious position for a lady-this being known as a

, with its moat and its clustering towers. But it has a little look of some other parts of the principality. One might fancy one's se

reckenstein?

-the summer residence

ever liv

landscape before him. "It is the first time you have ever asked me about Silberstadt," she sa

oment. "Now you wouldn'

declared. "You never ask anything outright; there

nce in foreign lands, and who yet disliked to hear Americans abused. "We don't like to tread upon people'

o marry him; on the contrary. But on that basis I refused to listen to him. So he offered me marriage-in so far as he might.

o was this?"

Eugenia. "You should neve

n was relating history " Acton answer

l marriage. It is his brother's i

recious pair!" cr

ng me very well. Silberstadt is a perfectly despotic little state, and the Reigning Prince may annul the mar

you have

e it difficult for them. But I have a little document in my writ

will be a

shall be at liberty to keep it if I choose. And I suppose I shall keep it. One must have a name.

y to sign that pa

d at him a moment.

h his hands in his pockets. "Wh

Prince may come back to me, may make a stand against his brother. He is

you," said Acton, "would y

en she rose. "I should have the satisfaction of saying,

Well," said Robert Acton, "it's a curious

been a friend of my father's. My father was dead; I was very much al

th you," Acton observed, "and kept yo

me money. The old Countess encouraged the Prince; she was even pressing. It seems to

looks the prettier for having unfolded her wrongs or her sufferings. "Well," he

cked a daisy from the grass. "

know-I don't kn

my revenge; in another case

her into the carriage. "At any rate," h

as of ebony and cabinets of ivory; sculptured monsters, grinning and leering on chimney-pieces, in front of beautifully figured hand-screens; porcelain dinner-sets, gleaming behind the glass doors of mahogany buffets; large screens, in corners, covered with tense silk and embroidered with mandarins and dragons. These things were scattered all over the house, and they gave Eugenia a pretext for a complete domiciliary visit. She liked it, she enjoyed it; she thought it a very nice place. It had a mixture of the homely and the liberal, and though it was almost a museum, the large, little-used rooms were as fresh and clean as a well-kept dairy. Lizzie Acton told her that she dusted all the pagodas and other curiosities every day with her own hands; and the Baroness answered that she was evidently a household fairy. Lizzie had not at all the look of a young lady who dusted things; she wore such pretty dresses and had such delicate fingers that it was difficult to imagine her immersed in sordid cares. She came to meet Madame Münster on her arrival, but she said nothing, or almost nothing, and the Baroness again reflected-she had had occasion to do so before-that American girls had no manners. She disliked this little American girl, and she was quite prepared to learn that she had failed to commend herself to Miss Acton. Lizzie struck her as positive and explicit almost to pertness; and the idea of her combining the apparent incongruities of a taste for housework and the wearing of fresh, Parisian-looking dresses suggested the possession of a dangerous energy. It

iration on the girl's part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing, childishly-mocking indifference to the results of comparison. Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced woman of five and fifty, sitting with pillows behind her, and looking out on a clump of hemlocks. She was very modest, very timid, and very ill; she made Eugenia feel

al about you," she said,

ensely of you. Oh, he talks of you as you would like," the B

otion of gratitude. And Acton rarely talked of his emotions. The Baroness turned her smile toward him, and she instantly felt that she had been observed to be fibbing. She had struck a false note. But who were these people to whom such fibbing was not pleasing? If they were annoyed, the Baroness was equally so; and after the exchange of a few civi

she looked at him a moment. "I have almost

sisted her into the carriage without saying anything. But just before the vehicle began