So they listened to one another, and blinded the world by putting bandages on their eyes, after the fashion of little boys and girls.
Meantime the fair being who had brought these two from the ends of the social scale into this happy tangle, the beneficent Countess, was wretched.

When you are in the enemy's country you are dependent on the activity and zeal of your spies and scouts, and the best of these--Polly Wheedle, to wit--had proved defective, recalcitrant even.

And because a letter had been lost in her room! as the Countess exclaimed to herself, though Polly gave her no reasons.

The Countess had, therefore, to rely chiefly upon personal observation, upon her intuitions, upon her sensations in the proximity of the people to whom she was opposed; and from these she gathered that she was, to use the word which seemed fitting to her, betrayed.

Still to be sweet, still to smile and to amuse,--still to give her zealous attention to the business of the diplomatist's Election, still to go through her church-services devoutly, required heroism; she was equal to it, for she had remarkable courage; but it was hard to feel no longer at one with Providence.