Who would have ventured to prophesy that of the royal kindred and cherished guests, the Prince of Leiningen was to die a landless man, the Duc de Nemours to spend long years in exile, the Duchesse to be cut down in the flower of her womanhood? Who would have guessed that this great nobleman, the head of an ancient house, was to perish by a miserable accident in a foreign hotel; that his sister, the wife of an unfortunate statesman, was to be dragged through the mire of a divorce court; that the treasures of a princely home were to pass away from the race that had accumulated them, under the strokes of an auctioneer's hammer? Who could have dreamt that this fine intellect and loving heart would follow the lord of their destiny to Hades, and wander there for evermore distracted, in the land of shadows, where there is no light of the sun to show the way, no firm ground to stay the tottering feet and groping hands? As for these two fair sisters in Watteau style of blue and pink, and green and pink taffetas, lace, and pearls, and roses--surely the daintiest, most aristocratic shepherdesses ever beheld--one of them would have lost her graceful equanimity, reddened with affront, and tingled to the finger-tips with angry unbelief if she had been warned beforehand that she would be amongst the last of the high-born, high-bred brides who would forfeit her birthright and her presence at a Queen's Court by agreeing to be married at the hands of a blacksmith instead of a bishop, before the rude hymeneal altar at Gretna. But to-night there was no alarming interlude, like a herald of evil, to shake the nerves of the company--nothing more unpropitious than the _contretemps_ to an unlucky lady of being overcome by the heat and seized with a fainting-fit, which caused her over-zealous supporters to remove her luxuriant powdered wig in order to give her greater air and coolness, so that she was fain, the moment she recovered, to hide her diminished head by a rapid discomfited retreat from what remained of the revelry.