There now began, from 1898, a thoroughly reactionary rule of the dowager empress.

At length, with crimsoned cheeks, and the hot tears starting to my eyes, I rose and received, rather than returned the offered embrace, and found myself in the capacious arms of one whom I should have taken for an old dowager duchess.

It took place accordingly, in the presence of the king of Bohemia, the duke of Savoy, the dowager queens of France and Hungary, the duchess of Lorraine, and an immense assemblage of nobility from various countries.

" He had been asked by the dowager lady to recognize her son.

To seduce him to favor his designs he had recourse to the dowager princess of Orange, his mother-in-law, whose gentle character and exemplary conduct had procured her universal esteem and the influence naturally attendant on it.

'Gentlemen,' quoth Hook, with charming simplicity; 'ladies, I think you mean; at any rate, those are the dowager peeresses in their own right.'

Emboldened by the absence of her dowager kinswoman, Mrs. Branston felt herself independent, free to do a foolish thing, and ready to abide the hazard of her folly.

The savings of a dowager countess even in forty years of seclusion could be but a small fund to draw upon for the expenses of life at high pressure.