"Yes, there are the most romantic stories
afloat about her."

"Married, or a widow?"

"Married, but separated from her
husband. It is supposed that some ill-
treatment from him caused her infirmity a
spinal injury. She is paralysed."

"Good Heaven!"

"A thousand pities, is it not? What
she would be, however, if she had the full
use of her limbs, it is impossible to imagine,
for there can hardly be anything more active, more
energetic, more zealous and
persevering than she is in her present
condition. She does double or treble the work
of any ordinary woman. I fancy there
would be rather too much of it, if she were
as able-bodied as she is restless and quick-
witted she and Sorrow."

"Sorrow!"

"I forgot for the moment that you were
so new a comer into these parts as not to
know that she has given her dog as odd a
name as people give her. She is popularly
called The Mermaid, and she calls her dog
Sorrow."

I now understood that the lady was the
Mermaid, respecting whom I had heard
that broken talk at the table-d'hote.

"What is her condition?" I asked.

"That is exactly what one can never
realise. Her eyes are so bright, her brain
so busy, her hands so active, that one feels
inclined to suspect it is only a temporary
caprice that keeps her on that couch; that
instead of having lost the use of her limbs,
she is only remaining quiet till her wings
are full grown, there is so much of the
'Psyche, my soul,' about her. But the
consequence is, that there is also a good
deal of disappointment to be gone through
on her account, and the headlong admirers
of today are often changed into the bitter
detractors of tomorrow; but you will
never find two or three persons gathered
together in Constantinople without hearing
her name. It is certain that those who
know her best love her most. The
Mertons met her at Ems, and were so fascinated
by her that, finding she was coming south
for her health, they invited her to join
them, and thus it came about that they
live together. The Mertons and Madame
de Beaufort, their daughter, are as the
opposite poles, however, respecting the
countess. Madame de Beaufort hates her;
Monsieur de Beaufort is her devoted
admirer, which may be at the bottom of it,
perhaps."

Three months passed away, and I was
still at Constantinople. The news from the
seat of war was most fluctuating and
contradictory, and it is possible that we who
were supposed to be at the headquarters
of information knew less than was known
in England and France. Never was there
such a cradle of serpent intrigues as
Constantinople at that time, and there was no
Hercules to strangle them. Check and
counter check, thrust and feint and parry,
were the order of the day.

I was interested in it all, but I did not da
re, all at once, to whisper to myself that
there was one being who interested me
more than aught else. The day after our
first meeting I had been formally
introduced to the Countess Irene, and since then
I had seen her repeatedly.

I had kept a little aloof at first, but my
grave, distant manner seemed to please
her, and she frankly showed it. I am sure
it was a relief to her to meet with a man
who talked to her without any flighty
raptures. I was so disinterested, too, in all
the diplomatic fencing going on, that it
gave, I know, a zest to all our conversations.
We talked about books, not gossip.

I found her highly cultivated, but with
the cultivation of a person who had
educated herself. She would astonish me with
pretty ignorances, and then suddenly make
me marvel still more at her knowledge.

"I am afraid," she would say, laughingly,
"that what I have learned has not
assimilated with my mental constitution. In
some respects my mind is in an atrophy,
in others it is plethoric."

"But you are so young to have devoted
yourself to such studies."

"Young? In years I am eight-and-
twenty, in heart I am seventy eight, and in
temperament sixteen."

It was these contrasts which made her so
winning.

She had the most mobile face I have ever
seen. Large dark blue eyes, with at times
a violet, at times a steely iron grey, tinge
in them, small regular features, and a glory
of golden hair. This hair was quite
unearthly in its lightness and brightness. It
was a glittering fleece; it was a flake of
spun glass; it was an aureole powdered
with diamond dust! It seemed to have
spring and volition of its own, and either
hung round her shoulders like a sunlit
cloud, or wreathed round her head like a
nimbus.

She was carried on her couch into the
drawing rooms of the houses where she
visited, and this couch was always the