A peal of silvery laughter was the only reply the unhappy exquisite was at first able to obtain; but, as soon as she could recover herself, the mysterious lady began: “_Milles pardons!_ I am so rude to make a laugh at you, but I am so gay I alvays must laugh ven I see a ridiculous thing in front of--bah--vot you call before me. _Mon cher Monsieur_, you have, I know not how, tumbled into a delusion. I am not at all zie Countess Bertha von Rosenthal, but zie Countess Bertha Hasimoff, _en route_ to stay viz my friend, Lady St. Clare, in Park Lane, London, till my hosband shall capture zie permission of die Czar to leave Petersburg and transport himselfs after me.” Coverdale, Alice, and the Countess Hasimoff, glanced first at D’Almayne, then at one another, and then--but if they were heartless enough to laugh consumedly, we will draw a veil over such unfeeling conduct. CHAPTER XX.--THE MORNING OF THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER. THE first of September! No wonder if we were a covey of partridges what we should think about the first of September, and how, generalizing from that idea, we should feel towards the race of men,--sons of guns, as in partridge parlance we should, doubtless, metaphorically term them! We wonder from what point we should regard pointers (disappointers, as a witty friend of ours called a couple of “wild young dogs” who ran in upon their game, and cheated him of a promising shot), or how we should look upon a setter making a “dead set” at us! Reasoning by analogy, and not supposing partridges to be better Christians than Christians themselves, we fear we should consider sportsmen (the very name is an addition of insult to injury) greater brutes than their four-footed allies; and that the idea of standing fire (either kitchen or gun), the notion of the roasting we must undergo after we have been plucked,--of the way in which we should be cut up by a set of blades, who are, after all, ready enough to pick our brains, and avail themselves of our merry-thoughts, would put us in such a flutter that it would be a mercy if we were not to show the white feather, and refuse to die game after all.