wretched General Petronovitch and Philip, a rivalry which we shall hear more of. The Princess Radna, I am told, intends to obtain a divorce; she will lay her case before the Czar himself."
"Does it strike you at all," asked Walter, for the first time turning towards his wife and neglecting his cigarette, "that this General Petronovitch may have met with foul play?"
"No; why should it? This is not ancient Venice. What foul play could possibly happen to him, except the foul play that is evidently part of his character; the foul play of a reprobate?"
"And Philip?" continued Walter, interrogatively; "you are quite satisfied in your own mind that he is under no restraint, that he left us voluntarily, and is away for his own wicked purposes?"
"I only know," Jenny replied, "that his conduct at the countess' reception was shameful; that his manner towards the hostess was that of a weak fool under the fascinations of a designing woman; that his withdrawal from our society the next day, and his appearance with the Countess Stravensky in her ostentatious gondola, are a sufficient justification of what we have thought desirable in the interest of Dolly."
"But you didn't see him, my dear, in the gondola."
"Beppodid," she replied, "and Beppo saw the boat turn into the little canal,, which has a side entrance into the palace where she gave her very mixed and Bohemian reception."
"You thought differently of the reception, my dear, when she invited us, and were tremendously impressed with it until"
"Philip made a fool of himself," exclaimed Jenny, interrupting her argumentative lord; "and why you will go on repeating a!l this, and come back to it as if we were discussing it now for the first time, and had not sat up
