She put this wise resolution in practice, and had already played the same game with half a score, (the last of whom was a young guardsman, who had just ridden into her heart by managing his steed with the air of a "feathered Mercury," one day in Hyde Park,) when Thaddeus made his appearance before her. The moment she fixed her eyes on him, her inflammable imagination was set in a blaze. She forgot his apparent subordinate quality in the nobleness of his figure; and once or twice that evening, while she was flitting about, the sparkling cynosure of the Duchess of Orkney's masquerade, her thoughts hovered over the handsome foreigner. She viewed the subject first one way and then another, and, in her ever varying mind, "he was everything by turns, and nothing long;" but at length she argued herself into a belief that he must be a man of rank from some of the German courts, who having seen her somewhere unknown to herself, had fallen in love with her, and so had persuaded Lady Tinemouth to introduce him as a master of languages to her family that he might the better appreciate the disinterestedness of her disposition. This wild notion having once got into her head, received instant credence. She resolved, without seeming to suspect it, to treat him as his quality deserved, and to deliver sentiments in his hearing which should charm him with their delicacy and generosity. With these chimeras floating in her brain, she returned home, went to bed, and dreamed that Mr. Constantine had turned out to be the _Duc d'Enghien_, had offered her his hand, and that she was conducted to the altar by a train of princes and princesses, his brothers and sisters. She woke the next morning from these deliriums in an ecstasy, deeming them prophetic; and, taking up her book, began with a fluttering attention to scan the lesson which Thaddeus had desired her to learn. CHAPTER XXIII. "What are these words? These seeming flowers? Maids to call them, 'Love in idleness.'" The following day at noon, as the Count Sobieski was crossing Cavendish Square to keep his appointment in Harley Street, he was met by Lady Sara Ross. She had spoken with the Misses Dundas the night before, at the masquerade, where discovering the pretty Euphemia through the dress of Eloisa, her jealous and incensed heart could not withstand the temptation of hinting at the captivating Abelard she had selected to direct her studies. Her ladyship soon penetrated into the situation of Euphemia's heated fancy, and drew from her, without betraying herself, that she expected to see her master the following day. Stung to the soul, Lady Sara quitted the rooms, and in a paroxysm of disappointment, determined to throw herself in his way as he went to her rival's house.