“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 seemed to nestle—­when she had vanished “it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.”  Madame la comtesse congratulated me on her appearance, and afterward on her success.  The emperor had distinguished her in a very flattering manner, and Eugenie, looking earnestly at her, said to the comtesse, “Nothing is so beautiful as youth,” perhaps beginning to regret her own.  No one had made so decided a sensation.

At Madame Le Fort’s next reception there was a sudden influx of new guests—­a young Belgian baron of old historic name, slim and stiff as a poker; a brisk French viscount, who told me that he had been connected with the embassy at Washington, and had quite fallen in love with our institutions; an Italian chevalier, a Russian prince.

Ugliness has its compensations, thought I. Nobody makes such a fuss over a pretty girl at home (they are not so uncommon), and I will never bring one to Paris again.  Thank Heaven! we are going to Italy soon.

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