I chanced to be looking on, when Prince ----, one of the brothers of a royal family of central Europe, was presented to the Countess ----. It was at a crowded ball; and I observed that, after a few minutes of conversation with her, he suddenly assumed a ceremonious indifference of manner, and went into another room. I saw at once that the slightness of the attention was an "anchor to windward," and that, in even those few minutes the prince had recognized a rare gem, and foreseen that, in the pursuit of it, he might need to be without any remembered particularity of attention. Lady ----- conversed with him with her usual earnest openness, but started a little, once or twice, at words which were certainly unaccompanied by their corresponding expression of countenance; and this, too, I put down for an assumption of disguise on the part of the prince. It was natural enough; with his conspicuous rank, he could only venture to be unguarded in his attentions to those for whom he had no presentiment of future intimacy. That the progress of this acquaintance should assume for me the interest of a drama--a scene of it played every night, with interludes every day, in public drives and excursions--would not be wonderful to you, could I have drawn the portrait of the principal performer in it, so that you would understand its novelty. I had never seen such a woman, and I was intensely interested to know how she would bear temptation. The peculiar character of the prince I easily understood; and I felt at once, that of all stages of an accomplished man's progress, he was at the one most dangerous to her, while, perhaps, no other kind of woman in the world would have called upon any but very practiced feelings of his own. He was of middle age, and had intellect enough to have long anticipated the ebb of pleasure. With his faculties and perceptions in full force, he was most fastidious in permitting himself to enjoy an enthusiasm, to admire, to yield to, or to embark upon with risk. The admiration of mere beauty, mere style, mere wit, mere superiority of intellect in woman, or of any of these combined, was but a recurrent phase of artificial life. He had been to the terminus, the farthest human capability of enjoyment of this, and was now back again to nature, with his keenest relish in reserve, looking for such outdoings of art as nature sometimes shows in her caprices. In the Countess ---- he recognized at once a rare miracle of this--a woman whose beauty, whose style, whose