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"The comic triumphs and the spoils Of sly Derision—still on every side Hurling the random bolts." .

would have been not a little astonished could she have known with what curiosity her arrival was anticipated that night in the royal circle. Already the history of the bracelet had reached the Queen's ear, with every possible variation and addition that human ingenuity, heightened by human envy, could devise. Perhaps of these Marie's version was the most covertly bitter; and poor Francesca appeared with a degree of artifice and coquetry about as far removed from her real nature as it was from the real case. But Anne of Austria, like most in her station, had singular tact in detecting the true and the false. The ear long accustomed to, and therefore on its guard against, dissimulation, often catches the fact from slight indications which would pass unnoticed by the common observer. Still, she too