"How are affairs there, may I inquire?"
"In a very singular state," replied the stranger. "With an autocratic government, and little sympathy between the court and the people, the court ardently espouses the cause of democracy in the case of the American colonies."
"And the King and Queen will rue it," energetically cried Lord Bellingham, bringing his slender, ivory-headed cane down to emphasize his remarks. "They are teaching their people rebellion against kings, and they may pay the penalty by being driven out of their own bailiwick."
The stranger, as if not caring to pursue the subject further, turned and said, in a manner at once flattering and respectful:
"May I be permitted to observe that these two charming young gentlewomen remind me strongly of her Majesty Queen Marie Antoinette; and in proof of this, allow me to show you this."
He drew from his bosom a very beautiful miniature of the Queen, set in brilliants, with her monogram, and handed it to Isabel. There was, undoubtedly, a likeness between that fair, haughty face and the faces of the two handsome young English girls, with their abundant blond hair, their brilliant blue eyes, and their short upper lips, like the Austrian.
Mary and Isabel smiled delightedly. It was something to be told they looked like the Queen of France, and that by a gentleman who had been honored by the gift of her portrait.
The miniature at once established the stranger in Lord Bellingham's mind as a person of consequence, and he was already deep in the good graces of Isabel and Mary.
His conversation further prepossessed them in his favor. Quiet, modest, and without dragging in the names of the great, it was easy to see that he had moved in the best society of Paris, and by his frank comment upon persons and things he showed he was not in slavish subservience to it. He spoke of the King and Queen with gratitude and affection, but on the subject of the administration of the military and naval affairs of France he showed something approaching bitterness and chagrin.
Lord Bellingham was deeply interested in the conversation of so accomplished a man; but Isabel and Mary, whose lives had been spent in seclusion, were perfectly infatuated with him. They thought him a duke, at least, and even whispered to each other, under cover of their grandfather's sonorous conversation, that the stranger might prove to be the Comte d'Artois, that younger brother of the royal house of France who was celebrated for milking the cow so beautifully at the Little Trianon, and who was the best dancer on the tight-rope in Paris.