“Inconsistency, Harry! You don’t know me, or you would not think me inconsistent. Can nothing but admiration and love render one watchful? I tell you that never had that woman a lover half so devoted and so observant as myself; but it is with the keen eye of hatred that I watch her every movement; it is the spirit of vengeance which actuates my every attention.” “It is a queer way of showing hatred. Do you mean to continue such devotion after her marriage with Colonel Middleton?” “That marriage will never take place, Harry. Think you the noble-minded Colonel would wed her if he knew all that I could tell him? I will not oppose idle words to a lover’s passion, but I will bring him proof such as he cannot doubt of her unworthiness, and thus will I fulfil my revenge.” Among the admirers whom Rosa drew around her during the Colonel’s absence, was one who excited her peculiar interest. The Baron de Stutenhoff was a Russian, with clear blue eyes, a profusion of long light hair, and also _presumed_ to be in possession of a _mouth_, although his bushy fox-colored mustachios and untrimmed beard rendered the fact somewhat difficult of proof to those who had never seen the gentleman expand his jaws at a supper-table. He was no impostor—no Spanish barber, no French cook, no Italian mountebank disguised _en marquis_. The Baron de Stutenhoff was actually a Baron, privileged to wear the crosses and ribbons of several orders at his buttonhole, and bearing on his cheek a broad and not very seemly scar of a sabre-cut received in honorable combat. He had been captivated with the charms of the beautiful coquette, and she was by no means displeased with the opportunity of flirting with so distinguished a man. He became her constant attendant in society; his habits and tastes assimilated to her own far better than did those of the sensitive and gifted Colonel Middleton, and when he talked, in bad French, of his fine estates, of the rich pomp of Russian life, of the droskas, with their silver bells and lining of costly furs, Rosa could not help wishing that she had not been quite so precipitate in her acceptance of the Colonel’s proposal. Nothing would have suited her vain humor so well as becoming the wonder of some foreign capital—_la belle Americaine_ of some distant land, where Americans were looked upon as savages. She fancied she could behold her resplendent beauty clad in the picturesque attire of a foreign clime, and winning the admiration of kings and princes in the semi-barbaric court of Russia. Her vanity led her into the same labyrinth where she had so often bewildered others, and, without confiding her feelings to her more prudent mother, she determined to mould circumstances to suit her new views of ambition. The Baron de Stutenhoff was a vain man, and of course easily led away by flattery. His title was derived from his long service in the Russian army, since, by a custom of that country, every freeman who has been in active