deeper play; but unless Mdlle. de Meronville were at the tables the young man would not go near them. He organised a little supper-party, at which were present two newly-arrived and most distinguished beauties: an English grass-widow whose husband was in India, and a Russian lady, who regarded the fact of her liege lord's being ruined, and sinking from a position of affluence into that of a hotel-keeper, as quite enough to excuse her leaving him for ever. But Ticehurst sulked through the banquet, and the ladies agreed in voting him _bête_ and _mauvais ton_. The fact was that the man was madly in love with Eugénie de Meronville, and cared for nothing but her society. What one does and where one goes and with whom one passes one's time is, of course, very easily known in a small coterie such as that assembled in the autumn at Baden; and it is not to be wondered at that M. André de Prailles suffered many a bad quarter of an hour as he witnessed and heard of the amicable relations between his fair compatriot and one of the leading representatives of that nation which he detested. What added to M. de Prailles' anger was the fact that whereas in Paris, where he was known to be the friend of certain _feuilletonistes_ with whom it was well for every actress to be on good terms, he had had cause for believing himself to be well thought of by the _ingénue_ of the Vaudeville, at Baden, where no such inducement existed, he had been completely snubbed by Eugénie, and treated with a _hauteur_ which set his blood boiling in his veins. M. de Prailles resented this after his own fashion. First, he addressed a passionate letter to his idol, reproaching her for her perfidy. To this he received a very short, and, to tell truth, a very ill-spelt, answer, in which the goddess replied that it was not his "_afair_," and that she would behave herself "_come je voulai_" wheresoever and with whomsoever she pleased. Then he took to a more open course of defiance--following on the trail of Mdlle. de Meronville and Lord Ticehurst, standing behind them at the table, occupying adjacent seats to theirs in the Kursaal or on the promenade, and enunciating, in by no means a hushed voice, his opinion on Englishmen in general and Lord Ticehurst in particular. But Lord Ticehurst's comprehension of the French language was limited, his comprehension of the English language, as spoken by M. de Prailles, was still more limited; and the strongest comment with which he favoured his opponent's ravings was a muttered inquiry as to what "that d--d little Frenchman was jabbering about."