GIFT OF E 2s*. WWfc WWVy^^W^^^^V^^' il 1 SSiiii^liil^ ,V W. v x,v A^wVW L-jVj u /Uw V W/T-^T U . KAA /i, 3yG^^ APPLETONS' NEW HANDY-VOLUME SERIES. VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. BY MRS. ANNIE EDWARDES, AUTHOR OF "ARCHIE LOYELL," "OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER?' " JBT : HEK FACE OH HER FORTUNE ? " ETC. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 549 AND 551 BKOADWAY. 1880. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE STUDY OP EUCLID . . . .5 II. DUTCH MICHAEL'S HOUR . . . 17 III. A HYDE PABK GODDESS . . . .37 IV.- CHAFF . 52 V. HEINE'S LOVE-SONGS . . . .61 VI. AT TWICKENHAM .... 67 VII. BEWARE ! . . . . . .88 VIII. PAINT, PATCHES, AND POWDER . 95 IX. A VILLAGE MARCHIONESS . . .108 X. HERE, OR ELSEWHERE . . 121 XI. A HEART . . . . . .127 XII. FIRST REHEARSALS .... 142 XIII. LORD VAUXHALL'S INVENTION . . .154 XIV. IN SILK ATTIRE . . . 172 XV. THOSE HORRIBLE PHOTOGRAPHERS ! . .188 XVI. LOST LENORE ..... 201 XVII. EFFACED .212 XVIII. IM WALD 228 XIX. BEAUTY'S CROWNING TRIUMPH . . .240 XX. UPON THE ARM OF A PRINCE 253 4388 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. CHAPTER I. THE STUDY OF EUCLID. " HE loves me," murmurs Jeanne, " a little not at all. He loves me." The sun's rays, setting, translate the dusk ex- panses of the Schwarzwald into gold ; they turn to fire the pointed roofs and lozenged windows of Schloss Egmont ; they kiss with softest bronze the head of Jeanne Dempster, as she stands, idly dreaming the dreams of seventeen, in one of the rose-shadowed, weed-grown terraces of the old Schloss garden. A half -demolished daisy is between the little maid's fingers ; a lesson-book, face downward, lies on the gravel at her feet. " Er liebt mich." Despite her English birth, Jeanne speaks German like a true child of the Wald ; sweet, incorrect, rippling German, deli- 6 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. ciously unlike the classic Hanoverian dialect of suburban boarding-schools. "Ein wenig nicht. Er liebt mich " " Deep, as usual, in Euclid ! " says a man's voice, close behind her shoulder. " Neither Mam- selle Ange nor Fraulein Jeanne being visible, I have brought the implements of study out of doors. But I would on no account disturb you. It were pity to break the thread of mathematical calcula- tion so profound. Choose your own time to be- gin." And depositing three or four dingy-looking schoolbooks, a pewter inkstand, some quill pens, and a sand-box upon the balustrade of the terrace, Jeanne's master takes his place on the stone bench beside which the girl is standing, and proceeds quietly to light his nleerschaum. "I don't know a word more of Euclid than when I first began it, sir." As she makes the con- fession, Jeanne picks up her lesson-book, Euclid's " Elements," from the ground. " * Proposition XV. Theorem : If two straight lines cut one another, the vertical or opposite angles shall be equal.' Then why try to prove it ? Why need we go on with these hideous angles and right angles ? Why do you insist yes, Mr. Wolf gang, insist on teach- ing me things that have no use and no beauty ? " " For the same reason that, were I Mamselle Ange, I would insist upon your learning to ride or dance," says Wolfgang coolly ; " to promote THE STUDY OF EUCLID. 7 the growth of muscle mental muscle in the case of Euclid. If all girls were taught mathemat- ics" " They would turn out beings as superior as all men ? " interrupts Jeanne, lifting her dark eyes to the master's face. " The thought encourages me, Mr. Wolfgang. I will try my best to see the meaning of Proposition XV., theorem and all, by next lesson." A smile, quickly suppressed, comes round the master's lips. " The sarcasm, Miss Dempster, is somewhat personal, considering that I am the only man of education higher than a woodcutter's who, as yet, has crossed your path." "The only man higher than a woodcutter? Du lieber, and what kind of life do you suppose that we have led, then, Ange and I ? We spend a week in Freiburg every summer, sir, and we have gone through the Kur at Autogast ; and once we went to Baden-Baden and saw the Emperor start for the Oos races four black horses he had, and outriders. And I was so near, his Majesty took off * his hat to me ! And we went to hear ' Faust ' in the evening, among a crowd of princes and royal dukes and Hochwohlgeborens. Mamselle Ange says I shall be taken to a ball at the Residenz next year, and we know old Baron von Katzenellenbo- gen and and the English chaplain's son at Frei- burg," cries Jeanne, desperately seeking to swell 8 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. the list of her male acquaintance by every avail- able item that memory or imagination can supply. "Emperors, royal dukes, Hochwohlgeborens, and the English chaplain's son at Freiburg," re- peats Wolfgang gravely. " I retract my obser- vation. Your experience of life and of men has been vastly wider than I gave you credit for especially in matters operatic." He glances with meaning at the petals that strew the terrace pave- ment. "You were rehearsing Marguerite's solil- oquy when I interrupted you just now satisfac- torily, I hope ? " His tone is one of banter, and the quick blood springs to little Jeanne's cheek. " I was rehearsing it, most satisfactorily," she answers, with all the steadiness she has at com- mand. "'Erliebtmich.'" Words that in English would scorch her lips, flow from them without constraint in the familiar homeliness of German. " ' Ein wenig nicht.' I had just got to ( Er liebt mich ' for the third time think of that, the third time, Mr. Wolfgang when I heard your voice." " Horrible disillusionment ! To bring you still more thoroughly from pleasant dreams to dis- tasteful reality, and, as this is the last lesson you will have for a week to come, suppose we proceed to serious work. You are not in a humor for Euclid, it seems, so I will begin by correcting your Latin exercise. ' Est finctimus oritoris poeta,' " opening the page at which, with all the THE STUDY OF EUCLID. 9 conscientiousness that is in her, his pupil has been working. " * Oritoris ! ' An error of the gravest nature at starting. Perhaps you will give me your attention while I try once more to ex- plain the use of the dative case after the ad- jective." The "serious work" proceeds upon its usual pattern. After an hour's torture over Latin and mathematics, the master produces a well-used vol- ume from his pocket, and begins to read aloud. Is not English elocution included among the arts which he has engaged himself (at one mark seven- ty-five pfennigs the lesson) to teach ? The book chosen to-night is Shakespeare, the play " Twelfth Night^' and Jeanne, hopelessly obtuse in the higher sciences, is moved to sighs, tears, laughter, at the reader's will. By and by it pleases Wolfgang to hear such crude judgments as the girl can offer upon the play " Shakespeare," as he says, " an- notated by Miss Jeanne Dempster." And then they hazard a bold review of it from the stand- point of Teutonic criticism, Mr. Wolfgang's mem- ory supplying the text of all the notablest trans- lations into German. " An Englishman who does not understand our language can never appreciate Shakespeare," he observes, with intentional arrogance. "Hear Heine's rendering of 'She never told her love,' and say if it be not stronger, sweeter, more musi- cal, than the original. 10 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. 4 .... Sie sagte ihre Liebe nie, Und liess Verheimlichung, wie in der Knospe Den Wurro, an ihrer Purpur-wange nagen.' " "No, it is not sweeter," cries little Jeanne stoutly. " ' Purpur-wange ' is hideous, positively hideous, to my ears. You pronounce English bet- ter than I do, sir, except the b's and p's. But, for all that, you are German at heart. You have not the English instinct as I have." " English instinct ! Shakespeare was only first unearthed, dug up out of the mold of British in- difference, by Lessing. Without Wieland, Her- der, Goethe, what would the world know of Shake- speare ? Why, this very play, this character of Viola, were never so divinely interpreted as in our own century by Heine." For a minute or more Jeanne is silent ; her delicate grave face rapt in thought, her eyes fixed on the cloudlets of amethyst and gold that float, like seraph heads, above the gradually dark- ening Wald. " In real life Viola would be a poor kind of creature," she remarks, with an air of conviction. " No girl with a grain of sense in her head would fall in love with a man, duke or no duke, unless he asked her to marry him first." " Exactly the criticism I should expect to hear from you," says Wolfgang. " Girls of seventeen are simply the most prosaic, heartless, matter-of- fact section of humanity. Talk of youthful im- THE STUDY OF EUCLID. 11 agination, fine feeling, the age of romance ! not one woman in a hundred has a spark of romance belonging to her, under thirty ! Why, Mamselle Ange laugh at me as you like, I mean what I say Mamselle Ange would be a thousand times more alive to the pathos of Viola's character than you are." " Remember the narrowness of my experience, sir. You told me, a minute ago, that I had never known a man better educated than a woodcutter, save yourself." A just perceptible shade of red crosses Wolf- gang's dark cheek. " That puts every question of romance or sen- timent on one side, does it not ? But your expe- rience is soon to be widened. Paul von Egmont and his sister, I hear, after a dozen years' absence, have decided to show their faces in the Wald again." It is Jeanne's turn to change color. From temple to throat blushes mantle over the child's pale skin ; her eyes sink beneath Wolfgang's questioning gaze. The master has compassion enough to look away from her. " She loves me a little not " (picking up a flower that has fallen from Jeanne's hand and shredding it, petal from petal) "she loves me not ! " He flings down the stalk with a certain gesture of impatience. " What better an- swer could be expected from such an oracle ! Do 12 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. you know, Miss Dempster, that the sun is down that unless I wish you good-by this very instant, I shall lose my train ? " "Lose it, sir," says little Jeanne promptly. " I invite you, in Mamselle Ange's name, to drink tea with us. Give up dust and heat and engine- smoke for once, and walk to Freiburg, as every- body used to do before the railroad was made across the mountains." " The invitation is tempting, Fraulein Jeanne. On an evening like this the very sight of an en- gine among our Black Forest valleys is an abomi- nation. Still, I have my evening class in Frei- burg, my good, studious lads, to whom work means work ! " "And Euclid, Euclid. Let the good, studious lads have a holiday, poor wretches ! They will be none the duller to-morrow, depend upon it." "The philosophy is pleasant, if not sound. ' Fais ce que tu aimes, advienne que pourra.' As I certainly love this garden better than my hot town lodging," says Wolfgang, "I will risk put- ting it into practice." He pauses, transfers his pipe the eternal meer- schaum from his lips to his breast-pocket, and with an air half of enjoyment, half of regret, looks around him. "Paul von Egmont need not have wandered far a-field in search of inspiration," he remarks presently. " Had the lad contented himself with THE STUDY OF EUCLID. 13 painting pictures of homely Schwarzwald lives, of homely Schwarzwald landscapes, his work, at least, might have boasted originality. In Rome, like so many of our German students, he has be- come but a pale copyist of greater artists' thoughts. But that is how men miss their true vocation their true happiness also nineteen times out of twenty." "Count Paul has missed happiness," says Jeanne, "if the village gossips say true. You know his story ? " " Not so well but that it might be good for me to hear you repeat it, little Jeanne." The famil- iar epithet seems to escape unawares from Wolf- gang's lips. "I know one version of the story only," he adds hastily " not the version given by the village gossips." "Well, sir, before Count Paul was one-and- twenty, he had the misfortune to fall in love. His sweetheart was a village girl who had sat to him as a model Wendolin the miller's daughter Malva." Jeanne raises her eyes to the master's face, but Wolfgang has turned sharply away ; his arms are folded across his breast. " She was the hand- somest maiden of the Hollenthal. You may see her portrait, any day you choose, just as Count Paul painted her, in the altar-piece of St. Ulrich Church. Some think," says little Jeanne, " that all her troubles sprang from that picture. No 14 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. maiden prospers in earthly love, you know, who has given her face as a model for the Holy Moth- er's. But these things are too deep for me. Yes, she was the handsomest maiden of the Hollenthal, and the best to this day> tears come into the vil- lage people's eyes when they speak of Wendolin's Malva and young Count Paul was to marry her at Easter. All the Von Egmonts at the Schloss here were beside themselves with mortification. Such a crime as a Von Egmont marrying a peas- ant maiden was not written, Ange says, in the records of their house. Count Paul had already determined to be a painter (that in itself was blow enough to the family pride), and was to go to Rome for the winter to study. If Malva had willed, he would have taken her with him as his bride, but the maiden had self-respect enough to say no. ' I will win the heart of the Countess and of her daughter yet,' said Wendolin's Malva. 6 Every good woman is pitiful. When the gra- cious ladies see me alone, without Count Paul, when they see how I shall work and learn and fit myself to be his wife, they will soften toward me.' " But the gracious ladies," goes on little Jeanne, " never softened. When young- Count Paul had been gone about three months, they came one day in their velvets and furs to Wendolin's house, bringing with them a letter a letter, so they said, that had just arrived from a brother artist of Paul's in Rome, and that it much behooved Malva THE STUDY OF EUCLID. 15 to listen to. That letter was the maiden's death- blow." Wolfgang rises hastily. He crosses to the farther side of the terrace and stands there, his back turned toward the western after-glow, his face veiled in shadow. Overhead the swifts are circling with happy cries, athwart the sun-colored heaven. A solitary thrush calls low from the Wald. The garden, gay with such hardy flowers as can stand the Black Forest climate, is at the zenith of its summer bravery. A spirit of fresh- ness, purity, peace, seems moving, like a visible presence, over the fair and fragrant earth. " Finish the maiden's story," says the master, after a time. " It has an interest for me beyond what you can understand. Tell me as much as you know of of Malva's death." " I know more of her death than of her life," says little Jeanne. " Old Fritzel's granddaughter, blind Lottchen, used to tell me about it. To all who were sad or stricken, Wendolin's Malva was good ; and often she would have the blind girl hold her company for days together, and talk to her, when the two were alone, of her love and of her sorrow. ( Count Paul is going to be a great painter ' this ran through all her thoughts ' and' he will choose for himself a noble wife. It were sin and shame, his brother painters say, that he should marry a peasant maiden because of her yellow hair and white throat. I should drag him 16 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. down to my level ; I should stand between him and his art ; I should make him unhappy with mean jealousies I, who would die to please his least wish, and think death sweet ! ' And then she would weep at times blind Lottchen could hear her weeping quietly the whole night long or she would rise, when she thought the rest of the house slept, and pray for Count Paul and for strength to be true to him." " True ! " repeats Wolfgang, very low. " Have I not heard that she wrote Yon Egmont a letter, taking back her plighted troth, declaring that it was better that both should marry in their own class of life?" " That letter was written under the Grafin's di- rection (she was Paul's step-mother, you know, sir ; no real mother would so have risked her son's happiness). And Paul there, say the peas- ant people, was his sin he took the simple maid- en at her word. Ange and the Frau Meyer have heard there were other influences that helped against poor Malva. Some say there was a great English lady in Rome, whose flattery drew the young painter into her train of admirers, and some say there was an Italian play-actress, and some say there were both. About all this I know no- thing. Malva died ; her picture hangs where you may see it, over St. Ulrich high altar, and her grave is in the Kirchhof, beside the big yew. The carved marble cross at her head was placed DUTCH MICHAEL'S HOUR. 17 there by Count Paul's order. It came from Mu- nich, and cost more gold than Malva had touched in all her life. But he never troubled himself to visit the spot ; he never shed a tear over her grave. Blind Lottchen kept it fresh with flowers while she lived, and, now that Lottchen lies there too, I have planted pinks and rosemary above them both. I will go to the Kirchhof with you any evening you choose, sir." "I have been there already," answers Wolf- gang shortly. " When I came back to the Wald, two months ago, the first visit that I paid was to St. Ulrich churchyard." "And you saw Malva's grave? It is a fine marble cross, is it not ? But the Wald people say a stone-mason's bill can make poor amends for a broken heart." " Poor amends, in truth ! " repeats Wolfgang, with bitter emphasis. And then there is silence. CHAPTER II. DUTCH MICHAEL'S HOUR. SILENCE profound, yet fraught with inarticu- late murmurs, just as the air is haunted by im- palpable odors, from the adjacent forest ; sweet, dewy silence, such as a city-wearied man might 2 18 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. well travel a few hundred miles, now, in this July weather, to enjoy. Schloss Egmont lies in one of the remoter val- leys of the Hollenthal a district curtly hinted at by guide-books, uninvaded by the great devastat- ing army of personally-conducted cockney sight- mongers. Less than two years ago the older people of St. Ulrich village had never heard a railway-whistle. No telegraphic wires link its in- terests with those of the outer world. The church- clock, set approximately right on Sunday morn- ings, possesses an hour-hand only. Do not the storks go and come ? Are there not the season of resin-gathering, the season of timber-floating, the rising and setting of God's sun throughout all the changes of the year ? What need men here with such finikin apportionments of time as quarters or minutes ? The deep discordance of a far-away supper-bell rouses Jeanne and her master from the reverie into which both have sunk. For fifteen years or more that bell has rested in idleness ; no need to summon Mamselle Ange, the housekeeper, and Jeanne, the solitary occupants of the Schloss, to their homely meals. During the past ten days, however, the prospect of Count Paul's return has roused the household into a sort of galvanized life. Dinner-bells, calling no one to dinner, are rung ; shutters are opened of a morning and closed at night ; Hans the gardener is learning, in a twenty- DUTCH MICHAEL'S HOUR. 19 year-old livery, to wait at table ; a flag, moldily displaying the Yon Egmont quarterings, floats, as was its wont in palmier times, from the topmost pepper-pot turret of the house. As Jeanne and Wolfgang draw near, Mamselle Ange appears, suddenly, at the central basement doorway a lamp in one hand, an open letter in the other. No man has ever definitely made out if Ange be maid, wife, or widow. It is the cus- tom throughout the Fatherland to call housekeep- ers "mamselle," irrespective of age, nation, or social status ; and Ange, for more than thirty years, has reigned supreme over the still-room and kitchens of Schloss Egmont. A Scotchwoman by descent, Angela Macgregor's youth was spent in Spain, from which country she accompanied the Countess Dolores von Egmont to the Schwarz- wald. From that day to this she has never left the grand duchy of Baden. " I dislike the coun- try, the climate, and the language," Mamselle Ange will tell you in moments of expansion ; " but I stay here for the sake of Paul and Salome. Dolores made me promise to be true to the chil- dren. I have kept my word yes, even when their father brought home another wife. One may be allowed to do one's duty, I suppose, without liking it?" " The children " have long passed away out of Ange's sight. Salome, brilliantly married in her teens, is mistress of a London embassy. Paul, 20 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. self -exiled at the age of twenty, divides his home- less Bohemian life between the different art capi- tals of Europe. But Ange remains at her post. "When the boy marries," she declares with a sigh, " I will take little Jeanne by the hand and make my way to Inverness. Paul will return with his bride to Egmont some day, and I shall go back to my father's house, among my father's peo- ple, to die." At the present moment excitement, unwonted, heightens our good Mamselle Ange's complexion. Her cap, at no time secure as to its foundations, is suspended over her left ear ; the points of her pelerine hang jauntily from the opposite shoulder. 'Tis evident the arrival of the letter-carrier has broken in upon some mysterious chemistry of the still-room. A huge checked apron envelops Ange's person from chin to ankle ; the skirt of her dress is pinned up in the style called " fishwife " by the fashion-books ; a pungent odor of raspberries and vinegar breaks on the sense at her approach. " Here is a fine prospect before us all," she ex- claims, or rather soliloquizes, as Jeanne and the master draw near. " Salome obliged to start for St. Petersburg on political affairs something new for our princess to be so dutiful in accom- panying her husband ! Paul, no one knows where, in Germany, and a parcel of fashionable fools coming to Schloss Egmont next Thursday ! Yes, fashionable fools ! " ejaculates Ange, in fiery DUTCH MICHAEL'S HOUR. 21 staccato. " The celebrated London beauty, Viv- ian Vivash. . . . What do we want with cele- brated beauties in the Black Forest? And her friend a lady of title and her other friend, a baronet and a maid ! To be entertained by me ! ' Trespassers ' (easy enough for Salome to write in that airy style) ' upon our good Mamselle Ange's hospitality.' Very great trespassers, indeed ! A beauty, and her friends, and her maid, just in the season of the small fruits ! Mr. Wolfgang " (awakening to the master's presence with a jump ; our good Mamselle being at once short-sighted and absent, her existence is passed in a chronic con- dition of surprise), " I believed you to have started for Freiburg an hour ago. May I ask you to hold the inkstand upright I mean to the left ? the ink leaks when it is held straight. If you will wait a minute, Mr. Wolfgang, I shall give you something to carry home with you. My last two bottles of raspberry vinegar have not turned out as clear as I could wish." "Mr. Wolfgang will drink tea with us to- night," interrupts little Jeanne. " The lesson was so long I had so many faults in my exercise that Mr. Wolfgang lost his train, and " " And will have the pleasure of walking home by starlight, Mamselle Ange's present of rasp- berry vinegar in his pocket," remarks Wolfgang, with composure. "It is not over-clear, Mr. Wolfgang not to 22 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. compare with my company vinegar but it will make you a nice, wholesome drink during the hot weeks. And where means are small," says Ange, with a compassionate shake of the head, " of course every little is a help." Jeanne glances in an agony at Wolfgang ; but the point-blank mention of his poverty has evidently not disconcerted him. A diverted smile lights his face : as he follows Mamselle Ange up the winding stair which leads from the basement to the parterre floor, he sings, half aloud, the first bars of "The Wanderer " : " Tired and worn, as the sun goes down, The Wanderer enters his native town, And see ! His old friends pass him by, So bronzed his cheek. . . ." "I do not, generally, admit strangers to this room," cries Mamselle Ange, pushing back an oaken door on the left side of the landing. " How- ever, for once Jeanne, my dear," with meaning " for once, we shall be glad to bid Mr. Wolf- gang welcome, and to give him a slice of currant cake, a cup of English tea, such, I am sure, as he does not often taste. Come in, Mr. Wolfgang " (accompanying the invitation by a ceremonious courtesy). " This used to be Count Paul's study ; you see his portrait there, above the bookcase, as he was at fourteen ; and Jeanne and I make it our summer parlor. One might call it a comfortable DUTCH MICHAEL'S HOUR. 23 room, if it were possible ever to be comfortable out of Great Britain. Two lone women seem less stranded, at all events, less like sand on the sea- shore, here than elsewhere, in Schloss Egmont." It is a room well loved by little Jeanne ; the more, perhaps, in that she has no British experi- ences whereon to found her ideas of comfort. A wainscoted hexagonal room, situate in the western tower of the Schloss, pine-woods in front, pine- woods on either side ; a vista of blue moorland showing through a clearing among the forests at one solitary point. As a child, Jeanne used to be told that blue streak was the sea. When Fraulein Jeanne was old enough, said the waiting-maidens, she should sail away thither, like the wood-mer- chants floating down upon their rafts to the coun- try of the Mynheers, and meet her father and moth- er, provided she worked diligently at her sampler and sums meanwhile. Jeanne Dempster arrived at the truth of the legend a good many years ago. She knows that the blue streak is the Rhine plain ; knows that her father and mother have crossed a sea the navi- gation of whose currents not the most assiduous sampler- working no, not even a mastery of the rule of three can facilitate. With wiser people than Jeanne, however, the magic of a belief is apt to linger longer than the belief itself. The blue streak is but the Rhine plain ! And still, at seven- teen as at seven, it remains a heaven-kissed horizon 24 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. to the girl's hopes a far-stretching background to a thousand sweet and unsubstantial dreams. Twilight by this time has died out ; external objects are no longer discernible, yet can one feel the presence of the woods by the indistinct sough- ing sound, the piny aroma that enters through the open windows. Unpinning her apron and setting her cap approximately straight before the one small mirror of which the study can boast, Mam- selle Ange takes her seat at the table, where a lamp and tea equipage are set ready. The master places himself in such a position as exactly to confront the picture of Count Paul von Egmont. It is an oil-painting, life-size, by Werner. The boy, in point-lace and velvet, seems to look out with earnest, living eyes from the canvas ; a side- light falls softly, yet with Rembrandt-like inten- sity of effect, upon the fair young face. "You are looking at a masterpiece, sir," says Ange, as Wolfgang stirs his tea, somewhat ab- sently. " It is said, from an art point of view, to be the best portrait Werner ever painted, let alone the beauty of the subject. People used to talk of Salome's good looks. ' An aristocratic profile,' said these German Hochwohlgeborens. 'An alabaster brow a complexion ! ' Salome was not to be spoken of in the same day as the boy. Paul's heart was aristocratic, in the best sense of the word, and his heart was written on his counte- nance. Ah me ! " muses Ange, " I should recog- DUTCH MICHAEL'S HOUR. 25 nize his smile among a thousand. Salome, for aught I know, may be just a prettyish, faded woman, a doll that has lost its paint the usual ending of a profile and a complexion. A face like Paul's must grow nobler under the influence of years. ; "Take away the millinery, the velvet, the point-lace, the Rembrandt effect," remarks Wolf- gang coolly, " and one would call Paul von Eg- mont an ordinary-looking boy." " Ordinary ! " exclaims little Jeanne, Mamselle Ange chiming in an indignant second. " You can look at that forehead, at those lips, sir, and call them ordinary? Count Paul's face is just the most beautiful thing in the world," says Jeanne, with warmth. It is not the child's wont to be de- monstrative ; but Wolfgang's disparaging tone, a certain contempt with which he looks up at Paul von Egmont's portrait, have stung her out of her accustomed reticence. "Whenever we leave Schloss Egmont yes, mamselle, whenever you and I start off for Inverness we will carry that portrait away with us. I could not live with- out it." The master turns ; he looks at his pupil with cool scrutiny. (How sharp is the contrast the thought flashes through Jeanne Dempster's mind how sharp the contrast between the lad with his affluence of spirits, of hope, and the man, "not clean past his youth, yet with some smack 26 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. of age in him, some relish of the saltness of time," and with disappointment, satiety, regret, printed, deeper even than his years should warrant, on his face !) " I should presume too far did I ask the reason of Fraulein Dempster's enthusiasm," he remarks, after a pause. " As art, the portrait, like all that Werner paints, has its merits. Beyond that" " Oh, you must never talk about Jeanne's rea- sons," interrupts Mamselle Ange ; " little Jeanne likes and dislikes, as she does most things, by in- stinct. From the time she could notice anything she took to worshiping Paul's picture I believe, until I taught her better, used to say her prayers to it." " Well for the child," answers Wolfgang, in a tone that brings the blood to Jeanne's cheek "well for the child, Mamselle Ange, that she used to say her prayers to anything ! " There is a flavor of heterodoxy about the re- mark that is little to Mamselle Ange's taste. She is an out-and-out, conservative, a stickler for ev- ery inch of social grade or barrier, and has no idea of a person in poor Mr. Wolfgang's class uttering anything beyond the blankest copy-book truisms. A man must be a " de " or a " von " who should venture, unrebuked, in Ange's presence, upon such a solecism as freethinking. "Jeanne, from her earliest years, has been educated in The Truth." Capitals poorly repre- DUTCH MICHAEL'S HOUR. 27 sent the pious emphasis of voice. "She was a luck-gift to me, you see," says Mamselle Ange, her old face softening. "One of your modern school of doctors, your scientists, your men of ideas, Mr. Wolfgang, discovered (in his own warm London study) that the sharp air of the Black Forest must, if you reasoned far enough, be a cure for failing lungs. He wrote a pamphlet about it ; and Jeanne's mother, nineteen years old, and with death on her flushed cheeks, was one of the first sent to Autogast to test the theory. She died ; and the baby, of course, came to me. I wonder during my life how many babies have come, of course, to me ! At first I took small no- tice of the child. I don't care for wise, solemn babies, who look you through and through with their black eyes, and never cry. Besides, where was the use of troubling about a little wretch who would be taken away from me as soon as she could run alone ? However, that day never came. Before Jeanne was three years old (the girl's name is Janet, but everything gets perverted if you live among Germans to think that, t my time of life, I, Angela Macgregor, should pass by the fool's name of Mamselle Ange !) before Jeanne was three years old there arrived news that her father had gone down on his way to India, such fortune as he had with him ; and would I like much my likings mattered ! to keep the child ? Yes, that is how my luck-gift came to me." 28 VIVIAN THE BEAUTY. "In the days before Paul von Egmont had left his home ? " asks Wolfgang, once more lift- ing his eyes to the young Count's portrait. " Paul von Egmont started for Rome a few months after the death of Jeanne's father. The lad's heart was heavy enough, God knows, with his own affairs, but I remember his taking Jeanne in his arms nay, child, there is nothing for you to turn so red about and kissing her before he started. Since then, all have left me," says Mamselle Ange, passing her hand across her forehead, " the old Count, his wife, Salome. . . . But what," suddenly recollecting her dignity " what can you care, Mr. Wolfgang, for these fam- ily histories ? You alluded, I think, to Jeanne's religious principles. She knew her catechism - in English and Scotch, I am no sectarian by the age of eight. She has been spiritually fed upon the works of Jeremy Taylor and Baxter. And she was confirmed last April yes, and when these dreadful people come upon us, child, you can wear out your confirmation frock," says Ange, hastily unfolding her letter, then holding it sidewise at about an inch distant from her nose. "Seven- o'clock dinners, dressing of an evening, are among the pleasures Salome has chalked out for us, as you shall hear : "