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A STRANGE, SAD COMEDY

to get money of people with adventurous tendencies were altogether unknown and unsuspected. Besides, people from a foreign country were very great novelties to them; and Letty seated herself, after tea, to hear all about that marvelous world beyond the sea. The Colonel still talked about his visit to Europe in 1835, and Paris in the days of the Citizen King, and imagined that everything had remained unchanged since then. Madame de Fonblanque was a stout Monarchist, as most French people of dubious antecedents profess to be, and gave out with much tact that, although only the widow of a poor officer in the Lancers, she was on intimate terms with all the Faubourg St. Germains. As she frankly admitted her modest means, there was no hint of braggadocio in anything she said in her fluent French-English. She had great curiosity about Mr. Romaine, and was well up in all his adventures since he had been in America. She spoke of him so coolly and critically that it never dawned upon her listeners that the difficulties between them were not of the usual business kind.

"As for the English mees," she said, calmly, "I would say to her, 'Go home, my pretty