sure to find the mother, and almost never without company. The daughter was not always to be seen, while the thirteen- or fourteen-year-old Lucidor was known only to intimates.
Frau von Murska was a really cultivated woman, and her cultivation had nothing banal about it. In the Viennese haut monde with which she vaguely allied herself without ever having more than a peripheral contact with it, she would have had a difficult time as a "blue-stocking." But in her head there was such a tangle of experiences, quirks, forebodings, errors, enthusiasms, discoveries, and apprehensions that it was not worth the effort to confine herself to what she got out of books. Her conversation galloped from one subject to another, and hit upon the most incredible transitions. Her restlessness was enough to make one sorry for her; if you heard her talking you would know, without her having to mention the fact, that she suffered from insomnia to the point of madness and was wearing herself out with complications and disappointed hopes. But above all it was entertaining and really remarkable to hear her. And without wishing to be indiscreet she occasionally was so to a most alarming degree. In short, she was a little fool, but of the amiable sort. She was a wholesome and, fundamentally, a charming and unusual woman. But her trying life, for which she had not been fitted, had muddled her somewhat, so that by forty-two she had already become a character. The majority of her judgements, her conceptions, were peculiarly her own and of a marked spiritual subtlety; but they most always came in the wrong place and would not apply at all to the person or the circumstance which occasioned them. The nearer a person was to her the less she examined him; and it was quite in keeping that she had the most preposterous idea of her two children and followed it blindly. Arabella was an angel in her eyes, Lucidor a tough little thing without much heart. Arabella was a thousand times too good for this world, while Lucidor was just made for it. As a matter of fact Arabella was the image of her dead father, a proud, discontented, and impatient man, and very handsome; although quick in his resentments, he had concealed them with perfect form. He had been respected or envied by men, and loved by a great many women. But at bottom he was cold. Little Lucidor, on the other hand, was all heart. But at this point I should like to say that Lucidor was not a young man, but a girl, by the name of Lucile. The notion of having the younger daughter
