conscious of doing so, until, after a few bars, I perceived myself the object of the choristers' curious attention, and saw the singer whose part I had taken cease to sing, either of his own accord or at a sign from the precentor. Certainly the wiry quavering and unskilled execution of the Klein Fleckenberger tenor could not compete for an instant with a voice which was then in its mellow prime, and of very considerable power; without vanity, the substitution was for the better, and so apparently thought the congregation, for a cat's footfall might have been heard in the church, and all eyes were turned towards the choir. Amongst them I particularly observed the beautiful hazel orbs of the Princess Theresa, which more than once fixed themselves upon me, so I fancied, as if she singled out my voice and distinguished it from the less cultivated vocalisation of my companions. The singing at an end, I observed her whisper the duke, who immediately cast a glance in my direction. The service over, I hurried from the church, eager to catch a view of my divinity, on whose passage I stationed myself. Presently an open carriage, with high-pacing Mecklenberg horses and a bearded chasseur, rolled rapidly by, its occupants receiving on their passage the respectful greetings of the people. In my turn I took off my hat, and I could not but think there was a gleam of recognition in the beautiful Theresa's eyes as she gracefully bent in acknowledgment of my salutation. And when the carriage had passed me a few yards, the duke put his head out and looked back, but for whom or what the look was intended I could not decide, before a turn of the road hid the vehicle from my view. The ragouts at the Fleckenberger Arms were not of such excellence as to induce me to linger over them, even if my appetite had not been somewhat destroyed by the feverish excitement in which the sight of the peerless Theresa had left me. The fact was, absurd as it may seem, that I had actually, and at first sight, allowed myself to fall violently in love with the charming and high-born German. I say absurd; because, although my father was of a good enough Brunswick family, and my mother, a rich English heiress, had brought him a rent-roll perhaps not much inferior to the combined civil list and private revenue of the dukes of Klein Fleckenberg, yet a princess is always a princess, whether her realm be wide as China or limited as Monaco, a hemisphere or a paddock; and I was well assured of the haughty astonishment with which Augustus IX. would not fail to repel the presumptuous advances of plain Charles von Degen. At the time, however, I did not stay to calculate all this, but yielded to the impulse of the moment.