child herself; and no doubt, to begin with, she was in love. Then came
her majority. In defiance of all her trustees, she gave her whole
fortune to her husband, and no power could prevent her from so doing.

The Blackwater ménage blazed up into a sudden splendor. Lady
Blackwater's carriage and Lady Blackwater's jewels had never been finer;
and amid the crowds who frequented the house, the slight figure, the
sallow face, and absent eyes of her step-daughter attracted little
remark. Lady Alice Wensleydale was said to be delicate and reserved; she
made no friends, explained herself to no one; and it was supposed that
she occupied herself with her little boy.

Then one December she disappeared from the apartment in the Place
Vendôme. It was said that she and the boy found the climate of Paris too
cold in winter, and had gone for a time to Italy. Colonel Wensleydale
continued to live with the Blackwaters, and their apartment was no less
sumptuous, their dinners no less talked of, their extravagance no less
noisy than before. But Lady Alice did not come back with the spring; and
some ugly rumors began to creep about. They were checked, however, by
the death of Lord Blackwater, which occurred within a year of his
daughter's departure; by the monstrous debts he left behind him; and by
the sale of the contents of the famous apartment, matters, all of them,
sufficiently ugly or scandalous in themselves to keep the tongues of
fame busy. Lady Blackwater left Paris, and when she reappeared, it was
in Rome as the Comtesse d'Estrées, the wife of yet another old man,
whose health obliged them to winter in the south and to spend the summer
in yachting. Her _salon_ in Rome under Pio Nono became a great
rendezvous for English and Americans, attracted by the historic names
and titles that M. d'Estrées' connections among the Black nobility, his
wealth, and his interest in several of the Catholic banking-houses of