A NOBLE NAME;
OR,
DÖNNINGHAUSEN.
CHAPTER I.
"ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE."
At the window of a luxuriously-furnished dressing-room a young girl was seated sewing, murmuring verses the while to herself with an absorbed air. All around her lay various stuffs, ribbons, and laces, while standing upon a footstool at a toilet-table immediately behind her a strikingly beautiful child, five or six years old, was twisting gay ribbons about her head and arms, finally throwing around her shoulders a blue satin sash and looking at herself in the glass with immense satisfaction.
"Lisbeth, what are you doing?" a sharp voice suddenly asked, and from between the curtains of the portière of the door of the adjoining sleeping-room came a fair, pretty woman in an evident ill humour.
"Mamma!" the child exclaimed, and jumping hastily down from the footstool, she entangled herself in her draperies and fell. Her mother hurried towards her with a scream, but the young girl had already flown to the little one's assistance.