She was growing lovelier than her sister because she was a purer blonde, and yet Wanda had been accounted a miracle.

Remembering that, at a later period, a foreign adventuress almost inextricably ensnared one of the imperial family, the Countess Dobronowska's matrimonial project was not so insane.

Some other pretender to the grand-ducal left or right hand thought it feasible, for everybody said that it was feminine jealousy that led to the countess and her "little beauty" being ordered out of the White Czar's realm.

The pair, spurred on by the police of every capital, and all are in communication with St.Petersburg, at last rested in Paris.

It was a favorable moment; the French government had offended the older powers by its presumption in chastising venerable Austria almost as severely as the Great Napoleon had done.