“It is an English newspaper, my dear Countess. As I know you do not receive any of his countrymen, I have not asked your permission to present the Lord Selby; but hearing him read out your name in a paragraph here, I carried off his paper to have it translated for me. You read English, don't you?”
“Very imperfectly, and I detest it,” said she, impatiently; “but Prince Volkoffsky can, I am sure, oblige you.” And she turned away her head, in ill humor.
“It is here somewhere. Parbleu, I thought I marked the place,” muttered the Duke, as he handed the paper to the Russian. “Is n't that it?”
“This is all about theatres,—Madame Pasta and the Haymarket.”
“Ah! well, it is lower down; here, perhaps.”
“Court news. The Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar—”
“No, no; not that.”
“Oh, here it is. 'Great Scandal in High Life.—A very singular correspondence has just passed, and will soon, we believe, be made public, between the Heralds' College and Lord Glencore.'” Here the reader stopped, and lowered his voice at the next word.
“Read on, Prince. C'est mon mari,” said she, coldly, while a very slight movement of her upper lip betrayed what might mean scorn or sorrow, or even both.
The Prince, however, had now run his eyes over the paragraph, and crushing the newspaper in his hand, hurried away from the spot. The Duke as quickly followed, and soon overtook him.