an adventurer a throne to which he is unexpectedly raised. She was a
finished example of the pretty woman who views the universe as planned
for her convenience. What could go wrong in a world where noble ladies
lived in palaces hung with tapestry and damask, with powdered lacqueys
to wait on them, a turbaned blackamoor to tend their parrots and
monkeys, a coronet-coach at the door to carry them to mass or the
ridotto, and a handsome cicisbeo to display on the promenade? Everything
had combined to strengthen the Countess Clarice's faith in the existing
order of things. Her husband, Count Roberto di Tournanches, was one of
the King's equerries and distinguished for his brilliant career as an
officer of the Piedmontese army--a man marked for the highest favours in
a society where military influences were paramount. Passing at sixteen
from an aristocratic convent to the dreary magnificence of the Palazzo
Tournanches, Clarice had found herself a lady-in-waiting at the dullest
court in Europe and the wife of an army officer engrossed in his
profession, and pledged by etiquette to the service of another lady. Odo
Valsecca represented her escape from this bondage--the dash of romance
and folly in a life of elegant formalities; and the Countess, who would
not have sacrificed to him one of her rights as a court-lady or a nobil
donna of the Golden Book, regarded him as the reward which Providence
accords to a well-regulated conduct.

Her room, when Odo entered it on taking leave of Alfieri, was crowded,
as usual at that hour, with the hangers-on of the noble lady's lever:
the abatino in lace ruffles, handing about his latest rhymed acrostic,
the jeweller displaying a set of enamelled buckles newly imported from
Paris, and the black-breeched doctor with white bands who concocted
remedies for the Countess's vapours and megrims. These personages,
grouped about the toilet-table where the Countess sat under the hands of
a Parisian hairdresser, were picturesquely relieved against the stucco