"'Well, then, at least you will tell me whether you are French or

German; you speak both languages so perfectly.' "'I don't think I shall tell you that, General; you intend a surprise,

and are meditating the particular point of attack.' "'At all events, you won't deny this,' I said, 'that being honored by

your permission to converse, I ought to know how to address you. Shall I

say Madame la Comtesse?' "She laughed, and she would, no doubt, have met me with another

evasion--if, indeed, I can treat any occurrence in an interview every

circumstance of which was prearranged, as I now believe, with the

profoundest cunning, as liable to be modified by accident.

"'As to that,' she began; but she was interrupted, almost as she opened

her lips, by a gentleman, dressed in black, who looked particularly

elegant and distinguished, with this drawback, that his face was the

most deadly pale I ever saw, except in death. He was in no

masquerade--in the plain evening dress of a gentleman; and he said,

without a smile, but with a courtly and unusually low bow:-"'Will Madame la Comtesse permit me to say a very few words which may

interest her?' "The lady turned quickly to him, and touched her lip in token of

silence; she then said to me, 'Keep my place for me, General; I shall

return when I have said a few words.' "And with this injunction, playfully given, she walked a little aside

with the gentleman in black, and talked for some minutes, apparently

very earnestly. They then walked away slowly together in the crowd, and

I lost them for some minutes.

"I spent the interval in cudgeling my brains for a conjecture as to the

identity of the lady who seemed to remember me so kindly, and I was

thinking of turning about and joining in the conversation between my

pretty ward and the Countess's daughter, and trying whether, by the time

she returned, I might not have a surprise in store for her, by having

her name, title, chateau, and estates at my fingers' ends. But at this

moment she returned, accompanied by the pale man in black, who said: "'I shall return and inform Madame la Comtesse when her carriage is at

the door.' "He withdrew with a bow."




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