MOTHS. 7
her sunshade but been of steel. To be made ridiculous I There is
no more disastrous destiny under the sun.
The brown holland had ceased to cling about her, finding itself
repulsed; the Scotch plaid had fallen down on the plank ; there
were two brilliant and wi.^tful eyes regarding her from above, and
one hand still stretched out shyly.
" I am ^'ere 1 " said a voice in which tears trembled and held a
struggle with pride.
" I see you are!" said Lady Dolly with asperity. "What on
earth made you come in this—this—indecent way for—without
even dressing! I expected you at night. Is that Fraulein
Schroder? She should be ashamed of herself."
" I see no shame, Miladi," retorted in guttural tones an injured
German, " in that a long-absent and much-loving daughter should
be breathless to flee to embrace the one to whom she owes her
being------"
" Hold your tongue!" said Lady Dolly angrily. Fraulein
Schroder wore a green veil and blue spectacles, and was not beau¬
tiful to the eye, and was grizzle-headed; and the friends and
lovers, and courtiers, and enemies, were laughing uncontrollably.
" What an angel of loveliness ! But a woman ; quite a woman.
She must be twenty at least, my dear ?" said Princess Helene,
who always said the pleasantest thing she could think of at any
time.
"Vere is sixteen," said Lady Dolly sharply, much ruffled,
seeing angrily that the girl's head in its sunburnt sailor's hat, bound
with a black ribbon, was nearly a foot higher than her own, hung
down, though it now was, like a rose in the rain.
Tbere was a person coming up from his mile swim in the sea,
with the burnous-like folds cast about him more gracefully than
other men were able ever to cast theirs.
" How do you manage to get so much grace out ofa dozen yards
of bath towelling, Correze ? " asked an Englishman who was with
him.
" G'est man metier a moi d^ttre poseur," said the other, para¬
phrasing the famous saying of Joseph the Second.
" Ah, no," said the Englishman, " you never do poser ; that is
the secret of the charm of the thing. I feel like a fool in these
spadilles and swathings; but you—you look as if you had just
come up from a sacred river of the East, and are worthy to sing
strophes to a Nourmahal."
'^Encore unefois—mon metier," said the other, casting some of
the linen folds over his head, which was exceedingly handsome,
and almost line for line like the young Sebastian of Del Sarto. At
that moment he saw the little scene going on between Lady Dolly
and her daughter, and watched it from a distance with much
amusement.
" What an exquisite face that child has,—that lovely tint like
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