As a matter of fact, he is considerably past forty, and is--or, rather, was, up to six months ago, a widower with three children, two sons and a daughter." "I suppose," said Cleek, helping himself to a buttered scone, "I am to infer from what you say that at the period you mentioned, six months ago, the intrepid gentleman showed his courage yet more forcibly by taking a second wife?
Young or old ?" "Young," said Narkom in reply.

"Very young, not yet four-and-twenty, in fact, and very, very beautiful.

That is she who is 'featured' on the bill as the star of the equestrian part of the programme: 'Mlle.

Marie de Zanoni.' So far as I have been able to gather, the affair was a love match.

The lady, it appears, had no end of suitors, both in and out of the profession; it has even been hinted that she could, had she been so minded, have married an impressionable young Austrian nobleman of independent means who was madly in love with her; but she appears to have considered it preferable to become 'an old man's darling,' so to speak, and to have selected the middle-aged chevalier rather than someone whose age is nearer her own." "Nothing new in that, Mr.Narkom.Young women before Mlle.