introduction of a mention of two English
officers, I have given them fictitious names.
I was dining at Misseri's, having been
but four and twenty hours in Constantinople,
when I was addressed thus by my
vis-à-vis:

"God bless my soul, Eden, is that you?"

"It is."

"How did you get here?"

"By steamer."

"Why?"

"I scarcely know; but I must cross-
examine you, Caradoc, in my turn. How
long have you been here?"

"A twelvemonth. I am first attaché, you know.

"Do you remain?"

"Yes," with a shrug of the shoulders
which suggested that the prospect was
not considered a happy one.

"I am very glad."

"Dear old fellow, it will be less of a bore
now you are here. Come to my rooms
after dinner, and tell me the news from
England, and I will explain some of the
diplomatic and social mysteries of this
place. Bless you, it's like a spider's web-
it's so intricate and full of snares."

My dear old schoolfellow was an
incarnate benedicite. He blessed up and down,
right and left, through the whole length
and breadth of the vocabulary. The
person he spoke to, the person he spoke of,
the subject which he spoke on, were always
larded, if I may so term it, with blessings.
It was a kind of inverted, wrong side out,
species of swearing. I nodded and
continued my dinner. The crowded table-d'hote
of this crowded caravanserai was even fuller
than usual, but none of the persons present
were very interesting to me, though there
were some striking individuals, and some
grotesque family groups, present. In some
moods, either these or those would have
been enough to divert me for a whole
evening or more; now, I was in a state of
mind that made me deaf, dumb, and blind
to external things.

I had left England in a fury of love and
disappointment. I had been jilted. My
youth, and my six feet of not uncomely
manhood, my ardent love, weighed
amazingly light, I had found, against a coronet
and twenty thousand a year.

I had quitted England on the eve of her
marriage, and had been wandering about
on the Continent until now. During the
pauses of the dinner, through the polyglot
hum of voices around, I heard one word
repeated in almost every known dialect. It
was "Mermaid." At first I paid so little
attention to what was said, that I heard it
without attaching any sense to the word.
Then my languid intelligence was
sufficiently roused to suppose they were speaking
of some ship in the harbour. I was
surprised at so much animation about it,
however, and then it dawned upon me that
it must be a nickname given to a woman.

"Russian, I tell you."

"I could take my oath she is French."

"She might be Icelandic, from her
coldness."

"Icelandic? Yes, possibly, but remember
there are boiling springs in those snow-
bound valleys of Iceland."

"Very true, and in her there is fire also,
at times. She has gestures, movements,
which are almost volcanic."

"Movements?"

"Well, what shall I say?– in her aspect
andunder the warmth something that
freezes you."

I looked at the speaker. It was one of
the attaches of the French embassy. A
pale careworn looking young man, with the
uncertain glance and weak, tremulous
mouth which one often observes in men
who have more passion and self will than
intelligence. There was an air of great
excitement about him as he spoke, and
though he apparently sought to restrain
himself, he did not succeed in doing so.
The conversation still continued on this
subject, but became so fast and loud, that
I could no longer, without an effort of which
I was incapable, continue to comprehend it.
Every now and then, however, I caught
such phrases as the following:

"Remember Barham," I heard one of
them say; "Barham was one of her
victims. You knew what promise he gave,
what a splendid officer he was. She got
possession of him while he was here waiting
for despatches, drove him nearly mad with
her sorceries and charms, and then woke
him pitilessly from his dream."

"What became of him?"

"He joined his regiment, volunteered to
serve in the trenches the very night he
arrived out there, was all but fatally
wounded, his leg shot off from the thigh,
and is left now a mutilated cripple for life,
heart broken, wrecked in the midst of his
career, and all for her. And Needham;
ah! if he could have spoken, he must have
seen that fatal face smiling on the charge
of the light brigade, and urging him on.
I tell you, she has been the evil genius of
the allied armies."

"Bless her, she's a little siren," I heard
Caradoc say.