deprived us:  and, I fear, without it we cannot hope to have the justice of our cause pleaded in the English papers.  Mr. Redner, you know, the correspondent in Lisbon, is a sworn foe to Silva.  And why but because I would not procure him an invitation to Court!  The man was so horridly vulgar; his gloves were never clean; I had to hold a bouquet to my nose when I talked to him.  That, you say, was my fault!  Truly so.  But what woman can be civil to a low-bred, pretentious, offensive man?’

Mrs. Melville, again appealed to, smiled perfect sympathy, and said, to account for his character: 

’Yes.  He is the son of a small shopkeeper of some kind, in Southampton, I hear.’

‘A very good fellow in his way,’ said her husband.

‘Oh!  I can’t bear that class of people,’ Rose exclaimed.  ’I always keep out of their way.  You can always tell them.’

The Countess smiled considerate approbation of her exclusiveness and discernment.  So sweet a smile!

‘You were on deck early, my dear?’ she asked Evan, rather abruptly.

Master Alec answered for him:  ’Yes, he was, and so was Rose.  They made an appointment, just as they used to do under the oranges.’

‘Children!’ the Countess smiled to Mrs. Melville.

‘They always whisper when I’m by,’ Alec appended.

‘Children!’ the Countess’s sweetened visage entreated Mrs. Melville to re-echo; but that lady thought it best for the moment to direct Rose to look to her packing, now that she had done breakfast.

‘And I will take a walk with my brother on deck,’ said the Countess.  ‘Silva is too harassed for converse.’

The parties were thus divided.  The silent Count was left to meditate on his wrongs in the saloon; and the diplomatist, alone with his lady, thought fit to say to her, shortly:  ’Perhaps it would be as well to draw away from these people a little.  We ’ve done as much as we could for them, in bringing them over here.  They may be trying to compromise us.  That woman’s absurd.  She ’s ashamed of the brewer, and yet she wants to sell him—­or wants us to buy him.  Ha!  I think she wants us to send a couple of frigates, and threaten bombardment of the capital, if they don’t take her husband back, and receive him with honours.’

‘Perhaps it would be as well,’ said Mrs. Melville.  ’Rose’s invitation to him goes for nothing.’

‘Rose? inviting the Count? down to Hampshire?’ The diplomatist’s brows were lifted.

‘No, I mean the other,’ said the diplomatist’s wife.

’Oh! the young fellow! very good young fellow.  Gentlemanly.  No harm in him.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said the diplomatist’s wife.

’You don’t suppose he expects us to keep him on, or provide for him over here—­eh?’

The diplomatist’s wife informed him that such was not her thought, that he did not understand, and that it did not matter; and as soon as the Hon. Melville saw that she was brooding something essentially feminine, and which had no relationship to the great game of public life, curiosity was extinguished in him.