based principally on the approval of the ladies. All these excellent
judges agreed that he was a nice, quiet, agreeable person; and 'so
handsome!' At least the seven members of an English family, who had
come to visit Chambord, and lingered at the hotel a week--five of them
were daughters--all expressed this opinion of M. Jerome; and even a
supercilious French lady, with a particle attached to her name,
admitted that he was 'very well.'

One day, a new face appeared at table to interest me; and as the
mysterious gentleman and his diamond ring had puzzled me for a
fortnight, during which I had made no progress towards ascertaining
his real position and character, I was not sorry to have my attention
a little diverted by a mysterious lady. Madame de Mourairef--a Russian
name, thought I--was a very agreeable person to look at; much more so
to me than M. Jerome. She was not much past twenty years of age;
small, slight, elegant in shape, if not completely so in manners; and
with one of those charming little faces which you can analyse into
ugliness, but which in their synthesis, to speak as moderns should,
are admirable, adorable, fascinating. I should have thought that such
a _minois_ could belong only to Paris--the city, by the way, of ugly
women, whom art makes charming. However, there it was above the
shoulders, high of course--swan-necked women are only found in
England--above the shoulders of a Russian marchioness, princess,
czarina, or what you will, who called for her cigarettes after dinner,
was attended by a little _soubrette_, named Penelope, and looked for
all the world as if she had just been whirled off the boards of the
Opera Comique.

I at first believed that this was a mere _mascarade_; but when a
letter in a formidable envelope, with the seal of the Russian embassy,