again, and as we drove away, I exclaimed:--“There is somebody with whom one can enjoy talking! He is really a charming young man!” My mother said nothing at all. We stopped at Mme. Schumann’s, for I was determined to have a little talk with her before the evening,--merely to see her at the concert would not have satisfied me at all. The dear old days in St. Petersburg were a little brought back to me, as I sat holding her hand, and listening to all she had to tell us of what had happened since we last met. But she was somewhat depressed, having just parted with her third daughter who had recently married an Italian Count, and unable to resign herself to the separation. “Only think what it means,” she said to my mother,--“to have brought up one’s child, loved and cared for her all these years, and then some stranger comes along, and carries her off, one knows not to what!” Again my mother kept silence, but I could not help thinking that there was quite a strange expression on her face. When we left, there was only just time to dress for the concert. My toilette was very hurriedly made, in spite of the satisfaction I felt in the very pretty and becoming dress--a white flowered silk over a pale blue underskirt--which I was to wear, for my one fear was of missing any of the music! But whilst I was dressing, the Prince of Roumania had been announced, and stayed, and stayed, and I could hardly control my impatience, till at last I heard him leave, and rushed to my mother, to hurry her. But the serious look with which she met me checked the impatient exclamation on my lips. Taking my arm in hers, she began to pace the room with me, saying, “The Prince of Roumania was here just now to ask you to be his wife.” She stopped and looked at me, half expecting the decided refusal, with which all such proposals had hitherto been met. But instead,--“Already?” was the only word I brought out. I said to myself,--he hardly knows me, he cannot love me, he happens to have heard how well and carefully I have been brought up, he thinks I may prove the suitable companion, the fittest helpmate for him in the work he has set himself. And a thousand similar thoughts flashed like lightning through my brain. But through it all I heard my mother telling me of the high and noble mission awaiting me, should I accept the Prince’s hand, of the wide field in which my energies might find scope, and the honour she accounted it that his choice should have fallen on me. As she went on talking, my hesitation seemed to fade away, and it was not long before I said to her,--“Let him come! He is the right one!” In a very short time the Prince had returned, I was summoned to the room, and remember going towards him with my hand outstretched, which he raised to his lips, and I remember too the words he spoke; but my words to him I do not recall, though my mother treasured them in her heart, and had them engraved below my portrait she sent him. She had already sent a little