We were taking tea in the house of a lady who is a friend of mine, and the talk turned upon the social dramas which develop from act to act, unheeded of the world,—dramas with whose leading characters we have been acquainted, if indeed we have not ourselves played a part in one or another of their scenes.

Among numerous other persons whom I do not remember, there was a girl of the blonde type, fair and slender, who, if she had had a lapful of flowers in place of the blear-eyed little dog that growled half hidden in the wide folds of her skirt, might have been compared without exaggeration to Shakespeare’s Ophelia.

So pure was the white of her forehead, the azure of her eyes.

Conversing with the fair girl was a young man, who stood with one hand resting on the causeuse of blue velvet where she sat and the other caressing the precious trinkets of his gold chain. In his affected pronunciation a slight foreign accent was noticeable, despite the fact that his look and bearing were as Spanish as those of the Cid or Bernardo del Carpio.

A gentleman of mature years, tall, thin, of distinguished and courteous manners, who seemed seriously preoccupied with the operation of sweetening to the exact point his cup of tea, completed the group nearest the fireplace, in whose warmth I sat down to tell this human history. It seems like a fable, but it is not; one could make a book of it; I have done so several times in imagination. Nevertheless, I will tell it in few words, since for him to whom it is given to comprehend it, these few will be more than enough.