“E bellissima, certamente,” said the Duca de Montepulciano, and stroked down his jetty moustache.

“Ein gar schones Madchen,” said the Hereditary Grand Duke of Eulenschreckenstein, and turned up his carroty one.

“Elle n’est pas mal, ma foi!” said the Prince de Borodino, with a scowl on his darkling brows.  “Mon Dieu, que ces cigarres sont mauvais!” he added as he too cast away his Cuba.

“Try one of my Pickwicks,” said Franklin Fox, with a sneer, offering his gold etui to the young Frenchman; “they are some of Pontet’s best, Prince.  What, do you bear malice?  Come, let us be friends,” said the gay and careless young patrician; but a scowl on the part of the Frenchman was the only reply.

“Want to know who she is?  Borodino knows who she is, Bagnigge,” the wag went on.

Everybody crowded around Monsieur de Borodino thus apostrophized.  The Marquis of Alicompayne, young De Boots of the Lifeguards, Tom Protocol of the Foreign Office; the gay young Peers, Farintosh, Poldoody, and the rest; and Bagnigge, for a wonder, not less eager than any one present.

“No, he will tell you nothing about her.  Don’t you see he has gone off in a fury!” Franklin Fox continued.  “He has his reasons, ce cher prince:  he will tell you nothing; but I will.  You know that I am au mieux with the dear old duchess.”

“They say Frank and she are engaged after the duke’s death,” cried Poldoody.

“I always thought Fwank was the duke’s illicit gweatgwandson,” drawled out De Boots.

“I heard that he doctored her Blenheim, and used to bring her wigs from Paris,” cried that malicious Tom Protocol, whose mots are known in every diplomatic salon from Petersburg to Palermo.

“Burn her wigs and hang her poodle!” said Bagnigge.  “Tell me about this girl, Franklin Fox.”

“In the first place, she has five hundred thousand acres, in a ring fence in Norfolk; a county in Scotland, a castle in Wales, a villa at Richmond, a corner house in Belgrave Square, and eighty thousand a year in the three-per-cents.”

“Apres?” said Bagnigge, still yawning.

“Secondly, Borodino lui fait la cour.  They are cousins, her mother was an Armagnac of the emigration; the old Marshal, his father, married another sister.  I believe he was footman in the family, before Napoleon princified him.”

“No, no, he was second coachman,” Tom Protocol good-naturedly interposed—­“a cavalry officer, Frank, not an infantry man.”

“’Faith you should have seen his fury (the young one’s, I mean) when he found me in the duchess’s room this evening, tete-a-tete with the heiress, who deigned to receive a bouquet from this hand.”

“It cost me three guineas,” poor Frank said, with a shrug and a sigh, “and that Covent Garden scoundrel gives no credit:  but she took the flowers;—­eh, Bagnigge?”

“And flung them to Alboni,” the Peer replied, with a haughty sneer.  And poor little Franklin Fox was compelled to own that she had.