There is absolutely nothing, I assure you." It was impossible to lie with more apparent awkwardness, and if any one merited the scorn of Baron Hafner, it was he.

Hardly had Madame Gorka spoken, when he had, with the rapidity of men of vivid imagination, seen Countess Steno and Maitland surprised by Gorka, at that very moment, in some place of rendezvous, and that surprise followed by a challenge, perhaps an immediate murder.
And, as Alba continued to laugh merrily, his presentiment of her sad fate became so vivid that his face actually clouded over.

He felt impelled to ascertain, when she questioned him, how great a friendship she bore him.

But his effort to hide his emotion rendered his voice so harsh that the young girl resumed: "I have vexed you by my questioning ?" "Not the least in the world," he replied, without being able to find a word of friendship.

He felt at that moment incapable of talking, as they usually did, in that tone of familiarity, partly mocking, partly sentimental, and he added: "I simply think this exposition somewhat melancholy, that is all." And, with a smile, "But we shall lose the opportunity of having it shown us by our incomparable cicerone," and he obliged her, by quickening her pace, to rejoin the group piloted by Hafner through the magnificence of the almost deserted apartment.
"See," said the former broker of Berlin and of Paris, now an enlightened amateur--"see, how that charlatan of a Fossati has taken care not to increase the number of trinkets now that we are in the reception-rooms.
These armchairs seem to await invited guests.