"La Carina was a celebrated dancer, exceedingly beautiful and clever, and famous for her charming, tiny feet as well as for...."
She hesitated.
"Well?" asked I, trying by my question to help her.
Miss Mitzi blushed and finished her sentence in a whisper:
"... As for her lover. It seems hardly believable that you never should have heard of her adventures with the Archduke Alphons Hector."
Now, distinguished reader, you—being endowed with a better brain than I—will, no doubt, remember that name Alphons Hector. And you will say: Alphons Hector, that is how the Herr Graf on the evening of Macbeth was called by Bischoff, the actor.
Readers are supposed to have good memories. I apparently have a bad one. When I heard Miss Mitzi pronouncing these two names "Alphons Hector" they did not bring any recollection to my brain.
"How my aunt Kathi—that was La Carina's real name—eloped with the Archduke, how he wanted to marry her, how the Emperor frustrated that plan, is a story which has been told so often that I am really surprised that you should not know it."
"Perhaps I was not allowed...."
"But was it not in the English papers?"