"What!—that girl-boy?"
"Yes, Mignon."
"You don't say so," says I. "Who then was the girl in yellow?"
"Oh! she is Duval."
"Well, I like her at any rate, poor thing; it was a shame to treat her so."
That moment I felt that the great Grand Duke was gone. Not one more glance. It was hard!
XXV.
THE BLACK CROOK.
SISTERS:—Since my intimacy with Imperial Royalty, Cousin Emily Elizabeth Dempster has been as proud as a peacock of our relationship, and speaks about the Court of all the Russias as if she expected to have an ice-palace built on the Neva for her, every winter, for the rest of her life. This may be natural—I dare say it is; but I'm afraid that Russia—being an awful despotism—wouldn't stand too many of one's relations crowding into the Imperial corn-crib, that being a free-born institution peculiar to high moral ideas which my great Grand Duke did not stay in Boston long enough to imbibe.