The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Princess Sonia

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Princess SoniaThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Princess SoniaAuthor: Julia MagruderIllustrator: Charles Dana GibsonRelease date: July 13, 2020 [eBook #62637]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by D A Alexander, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRINCESS SONIA ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Princess SoniaAuthor: Julia MagruderIllustrator: Charles Dana GibsonRelease date: July 13, 2020 [eBook #62637]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by D A Alexander, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)

Title: The Princess Sonia

Author: Julia MagruderIllustrator: Charles Dana Gibson

Author: Julia Magruder

Illustrator: Charles Dana Gibson

Release date: July 13, 2020 [eBook #62637]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by D A Alexander, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRINCESS SONIA ***

THE PRINCESS SONIA

“THE BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN ... HAD STEPPED BACK FROM HER EASEL.” (SEE PAGE 3.)

BYJULIA MAGRUDERWITH ILLUSTRATIONS BYCHARLES DANA GIBSONNEW YORKTHE CENTURY CO.1895Copyright, 1895, byThe Century Co.THE DE VINNE PRESS.TO GENEVIEVE

MARTHA KEENE had been at work for several months in Etienne’s atelier, in the Latin quarter of Paris, and although her appearance would have led one to believe her frail in health, she had never missed a working-day, and always occupied a good position well in view of the model, because she always came among the earliest to secure it. Her work was far from brilliant, and Etienne had noticed her very little at first. If he did so more of late, it was her ability to stick which had won her this favor. So many students had come and gone, rousing his hopes only to disappoint them, that it had got to be rather a comfort to the little old man to be sure of one earnest worker always in her place; and while he could not say that her work was good, it was certainly not bad.

Recently he had told Martha this several times. “Not bad” was about the highest praise that most of Etienne’s pupils got from him; and when the young American girl heard it for the first time applied to her work, she experienced what was perhaps one of the most thrilling sensations of her life.

It was followed by another thrilling sensation; for, as she looked up from the canvas which the master had thus commended, she met the beautiful eyes of the princess, turned upon her with a congratulatory smile.

It was almost too much for Martha. Her heart thumped so that her breathing became rapid and a little difficult. Instead of answering the princess’s smile, a frown contracted her forehead; for she was afraid that she was going to lose her self-control, and she needed a stern effort not to do so. Martha had a heart which was made for worshiping. Etienne and the princess were two of the people that she worshiped, and there was a third.

When Etienne had passed on, after smudging one part of her drawing with his thumb until it was a dirty blur, and scratching another part with ruthless streaks of soft charcoal, she remembered she had received hisfirst words of encouragement rather coldly, and had made the same sort of return for the princess’s smile. This plunged her from a state of delight into one of wretchedness. She looked toward the master with some hope of making amends; but he was too absorbed in his next criticism, and it was only too evident that her chance was gone. Then she glanced at the princess, to receive the same impression from that quarter. The beautiful young woman on whom her eyes rested had stepped back from her easel, and with her head turned sidewise, and her eyelids drawn up, was looking at her picture. She held a brush in one hand, with the fingers delicately poised, and in the other her palette, laid with brilliant dabs of color. Her lips were pursed critically, and her whole attitude and expression showed such absorption in her work that Martha felt it would be absurd to imagine that she or her behavior could have any part in that beautiful lady’s consciousness.

As usual, when Martha allowed herself to look at the princess, she forgot everything else. She had long ago had to make it a rule to place her easel so that she would be turned away from her enchantress while she was working; otherwise she could see and think only of her. At the present moment she was completely fascinated by the tall, strong figure, so firmly poised, with one foot advanced, and her body thrown backward from the slender waist, where a belt of old silver confined the folds of her red silk shirt-waist above the sweep of her skirt of dark green serge. This was her ordinary working-rig; and as she wore no apron, as most of the other students did, it was more or less streaked with paint. Martha herself wore her calico apron religiously, and was always neatly clothed beneath it; but she would have protested utterly against seeing her neighbor in an apron. It would have looked so unprincesslike! She was very tall and straight, this princess, and “Serene Highness” seemed to Martha to be written on every inch of her.

There was not much sociability among the students in the atelier. They came from many different countries, and spoke many different tongues; and they were such a mixture of aristocrats and plebeians—some were so afraid of patronizing and others of being patronized,—that the conditions generally were such as were opposed to much mixing. Talking wasforbidden during work-hours, except the little absolutely necessary whispering; and in the intermission at noon the princess always went away for lunch, and sometimes did not return. Martha, too, went to her mother’s apartment for the midday meal, though nothing ever prevented her from returning. Some of the students had chums, with whom they chatted glibly in the cloak-room; but as a rule, these intimacies had been formed outside.

Martha Keene was a girl who would never have made the first advance toward an acquaintance with any one; for, although she had passed her twentieth year, she was incorrigibly shy. This reserve of manner was so evident that it discouraged advances from others. She knew this and regretted it, but could not help it.

It had pleased Martha very much when, on a single occasion, this wall of isolation which she had built around herself had been broken through by a little American chatterbox, who had rattled away to her for ten minutes one day as she was waiting for her carriage in the cloak-room. This had been soon after her entrance at Etienne’s, and her voluble country-woman had vanished from the horizon thenext day; but in that one talk she had got almost all the knowledge of the atelier which she possessed.

Her informant had told her that the students were not supposed to inquire about one another at all, the ideal of the atelier being a place where high and low alike could lay aside their disabilities and get the benefits of the common workshop. She added that there had been several personages of importance studying there since she herself had been a student, but that she had always heard of it from the outside, and they had generally left before she had identified them. “I spotted the princess, though,” she had said. “As soon as I heard that there was a Russian princess studying here, I picked her out. Do you know which one she is?” Martha had answered, “The lady in the red blouse”—a guess at once confirmed. “Isn’t she stunning?” her companion had gone on; “I’m dying to speak to her! If she were not a princess, I’d have done it long ago. I can’t go the Russian; but no doubt she speaks every language. Russians always do.” At this point of the conversation the lady herself had come into the cloak-room. A neat French maid who was

“A LITTLE AMERICAN CHATTERBOX.”

in waiting had come forward, and held out her lady’s wrap, a magnificent sable thing, in which the beautiful creature had quickly infolded herself, and left the room, the two girls meanwhile making a tremendous effort to cover their breathless interest by an air of unconsciousness.

Ever since that day—indeed, even before it—Martha had been a silent worshiper at the shrine of the princess. She had a passionate love of beauty, and her heart, for all her grave and shy exterior, was packed as full of romance as it could hold. The discovery that this beautiful being was a princess—and a Russian princess, of all others—was meet food for this appetite for the romantic; and she dreamed by the hour about this young woman’s life, and wondered what it had been and was to be. She knew she could not be many years older than herself, and she wondered, with burning interest, whether she was or was not married. Sometimes she would hold to one opinion for days, and then something—a mere turn of expression, perhaps—would convert her to the opposite one. She wanted her to be unmarried, so that she might be free to construct from her imagination a beautifulfuture for her; and yet she dreaded to find out that she was married. There was certainly a look about the princess which contradicted Martha’s ideal of her as the possessor of a fair, unwritten life-page. Martha had watched her hands to see if she wore a wedding-ring; but those extraordinarily beautiful hands were either loaded down with jeweled gauds of antique workmanship or else quite ringless. Still, many married women were careless about wearing their wedding-rings, a thing which Martha herself could not comprehend; but she felt that this wonderful creature was removed as far as possible from her in both actuality and ideas.

Martha had heard the sound of the princess’s voice only once or twice, and on those occasions she had spoken French with what seemed to the American girl an absolutely perfect accent. Once she had been near enough to hear a little talk between the princess and Etienne, as he was criticizing the former’s work with rather more humanness, Martha thought, than he showed to the students generally; and once or twice when the princess had been placed near the model’s little retiring-room, Martha had had the joy of hearing her divinity givethe summons, in the usual atelier jargon, “C’est l’heure!” It seemed to the girl a most lovable act of condescension on the part of her Serene Highness.

One day (it was the day after Etienne had told her that her drawing was “not bad,” and the princess had smiled at her) Martha was working away, when she became aware that an easel was being pushed into the unoccupied space at her right hand. She had known that some one would soon take possession of this place, and she did not even look round to see who it was. Her whole attention was bent on making Etienne see that his encouragement had yielded good fruit, even though she had made no verbal acknowledgment of it. She went on drawing, with intense concentration, until, weary at last, she put down her charcoal, and stood resting her arms, with her hands on her hips. As she finished her scrutiny of her work, and looked around, she started to discover that it was the princess who was seated at the easel next her own, and was looking full at her. As Martha, confused and delighted, encountered that gaze, the beautiful lady’s lips parted in a friendly smile, and she whispered gently,

“Bon jour.”

Martha crimsoned with pleasure as she returned the greeting, and then both fell to work again. The princess was painting, laying on her color in a broad and daring style that almost frightened her neighbor. Martha watched her furtively while she crumbled her bread, and pretended to be erasing and touching up certain points in her picture. It was a bewildering delight to her to stand so close to the princess and see her at work, and she was agreeably aware that the princess was also aware of her, and perhaps even pleased at their being together.

When the time came for the model to rest, and the quiet of the room was a little relieved by the whispered talk that sprang up among the students as they waited, Martha felt that the princess had inclined toward her a little, and was looking at her work. She put down as childish the impulse that rushed up in her to cover the picture from sight, or to say how bad she knew it was, and she stood very still and very much embarrassed until the princess said again, in that exquisite utterance of French subtleties,

“C’est bien difficile, n’est-ce pas?”

Martha answered her somehow—she never knew what.

When the model came back, and they began to work again, she felt that she had become part of a wonderful experience. She had never seen the princess talking to any one else, and, amazing and undeserved as the tribute was, she could not be mistaken in thinking that the lovely lady wished to know her, and perhaps to allow her the dear privilege of such intercourse as their atelier life permitted. She never expected it to go beyond that; but that was far more than anything she had imagined.

Across one corner of her canvas Martha’s name was scrawled in full, and she knew that the princess must have seen it. She looked to see if there was any signature upon the princess’s picture, and, as if interpreting her thought, her neighbor, with a brilliant smile, dipped her brush in vermilion, and wrote in a bold, strong hand the word “Sonia.” This name (which Martha did not know to be the Russian abbreviation of Sophia) seemed to the girl very odd and beautiful, and peculiarly appropriate to its possessor.

Martha said nothing to her mother and sisters of her encounter with the princess. She had a way of locking very close in her heart her most personal and sacred feelings, and all that related to the princess was sacred to her now. During her earlier years she had so often been laughed at for an enthusiast that she had learned to keep back what she felt most strongly; and for that very reason, perhaps, the intensity of her feelings grew greater as she grew older. The enthusiasm of her life was for her only brother, whom she worshiped with a blind idolatry of the extent of which even he was unaware. There had been one or two other divinities in her horizon, always second to Harold; but at this period of her life she was suffering from a sense of disappointment in these as, one after the other, they had come short of her ardent expectations. She was now, therefore, in the exact state ofmind to take on a new object of worship. This the princess had become.

It was not surprising that Martha’s ideal had been so repeatedly unrealized, for it was a difficult one. She had suffered acutely from her former disappointments, and had even resolved never to pin her faith and hope on another woman. But the princess was not to be resisted. Martha felt that even if her goddess never spoke to her again, she was worthy of all adoration.

As the young girl drove through the streets of Paris in the early morning of the day following her brief interview with the princess, her heart was very happy.

In appearance Martha was small and rather plain; and no one would have noticed her, perhaps, but for the concentration of expression on her face as she looked out of the carriage window on her way to her atelier in the Latin Quarter. The people abroad at that hour were not of a class to pay much attention to such a look on a girl’s face. The little army of street-cleaners, occupying their brief hour with busy industry to produce the beautiful effect of gay cleanliness which the world enjoyed later in the day, had no time to notice Martha, andshe was as unaware of them. Even the ice on the figures in the fountains of the Place de la Concorde, which she generally admired in passing, she did not so much as see to-day. The “cold sea-maidens” wore an unusually beautiful veil of mist, made by the freezing spray, and Martha might have got an impression for some future picture if she had studied it with the early sunlight on it.

But she was thinking only of the princess as she drove along and crossed the bridge and entered old Paris. Here, too, all was familiar, for Martha had taken this drive daily for months, and there was nothing to disturb her preoccupation until she reached the Invalides, where her hero-worshiping soul never failed to offer a passing tribute of awe to the ashes of Napoleon.

As she turned into a cross street farther on, a little funeral procession met her. This sight, too, was familiar; but no wont and usage could keep Martha from being deeply moved as often as she witnessed the pitiful little ceremonial which attends the burial of the very poor in Paris.

It is usually in the early morning that these funerals occur, as there seems to be ademand upon the poor to give up to the more prosperous even the space in the streets which they, with their dead, lay claim to for so short a time. This was a child’s funeral, or, rather, it was the funeral of two children. There was neither hearse nor carriage. Each little coffin was borne upon a wretched bier carried by rough and shabby men, who appeared cross and reluctant in their miserable, faded trappings of mourning. Looking carefully, Martha discovered that there was a separate family of mourners to each little bier; and as the whole procession was under the command of a tall old man, who held his shoulders very erect, as if to atone for a limp in one leg, she comprehended that this bedizened old undertaker, with the ragged crape on his cocked hat and the dirty bunches of black and white ribbons on the end of his long staff of office, had consolidated his duties, probably at a slight and very welcome discount to his poor patrons, and was burying the dead of two families at once. Directly after him came the bearers of the light coffin, and just behind it were five little children, four girls and a boy, walking abreast, and dressed in mourning. This mourning consisted of hastily fashioned aprons made of dull black calico, and so carelessly fitted that the many-colored undergarments of the children showed plainly at every opening. The children were regular little steps, the boy being the youngest; and cold as it was, they were all bareheaded. Each carried a sprig of yellow bloom, which resembled, if indeed it was not, the mustard-flower. This they held very stiffly and correctly in their right hands, and they walked with an air of the utmost decorum. Behind them came their father and mother, the former looking more apathetic than sad, and the latter carrying with some complacency the dignity of a dingy and draggled crape veil, in frank contrast to a blue-and-green plaid dress. She was taller than her husband, and leaned awkwardly upon his arm, keeping no time whatever to his shuffling gait. Then came the other coffin and the second group of mourners, who were evidently not so fashionable as the first; for they made no effort at mourning, and walked after their little dead one with nothing like a flower, and in their common working-clothes.

While Martha’s carriage was passing this

“A TALL OLD MAN.”

procession, she saw on the other side of them, going in the same direction with her, a smart turnout in which a gentleman was driving, with a groom behind. The horses shone like satin, and their harness jingled and glittered in the morning sunshine. The gentleman and his servant were dressed with a brilliant effect of care and detail. The former was smoking a cigarette, and had a scarlet flower in his coat.

As the little funeral procession passed this carriage, the young swell who was driving bared his head, with its smoothly parted blond hair, remaining uncovered until the procession had passed, his servant imitating his act. This little tribute of homage to death which the French take the pains to perform always touched and pleased Martha. She thought of the absurdity of this man’s uncovering his head to that pauper baby alive; but the mystery of death imparted to it a majesty which the equal mystery of life could not. This child was a partaker of the knowledge of the unknown, into which Napoleon, lying near by, had also entered, and was, with him, divided from the merely mortal.

Martha thought of this as she watched the showy carriage, which had relaxed its speedfor a moment, whirling rapidly away toward the outskirts of the city. She wondered where that handsome, prosperous-looking, well-bred man was going at this early hour. Probably to fight a duel, she thought, in her romantic way! Perhaps in a few hours’ time he might be as dead as the poor little baby; and perhaps there was some one who loved and adored him as she did Harold!

These were the ideas which filled her mind as she reached the atelier, there to learn that there was a disappointment about the model, who had failed to come.

She was about to take off her wraps, and go to work on some drawings from casts, when an exquisite voice behind her said suddenly, “Pardon, mademoiselle,” and she turned to meet the gaze of the princess fixed upon her with a smile of lovely friendliness.

“What are you going to do?” she said in that faultless French which Martha had already admired.

For a moment the girl was quite overcome at such unexpected graciousness. Then she managed to say in her own faulty though perfectly fluent French, that she had thought she would go on and do what she could without a model.

“It is so dull, after having that glorious Antonio to pose for one,” said the princess. “I am not in the humor, and my carriage is gone. Yours, perhaps, is gone also. Do you feel like drawing to-day? Or do you, perhaps, feel more like calling a cab, and taking a drive with me? I should like it. Will you go?”

Martha crimsoned with pleasure as she accepted the invitation. There was no mistaking her delight at the suggestion.

“You are very good to go,” said the other, “especially as you know nothing of me, I suppose.”

“I know only that you are the princess—the Russian princess,” said Martha.

Her companion frowned slightly, and, Martha thought, looked a little annoyed. She reflected that she ought not, perhaps, to have told her that her secret had been discovered.

The little frown soon passed, however, and the princess smiled genially as she said:

“I am living incognito in Paris to study painting, and I do not go into the world. When I am not working I am often bored, and I frequently long for companionship. You make me very grateful by giving me yours this morning.”

The princess was very tall—so tall that when Martha walked at her side she had to turn her face upward to speak to her. They walked along in the most natural companionship until they reached a cab-stand nearby, and Martha thought her divinity more worshipful than ever as she stood wrapped in her long cloak, with a large, black-plumed hat crowning her beautiful head, and said some words of gentle pity about the poor old, weak-kneed cab-horses drawn up in a line.

When they had entered a cab, and were seated side by side, the princess said abruptly:

“If you had not heard something of me, I should have told you nothing. Why should we ask questions about each other? We meet to-day, art students in a Paris atelier, and we shall part to-morrow. What have we to do with formalities? Of you I know that you are a young American studying painting here, and I think, in a way, sympathetic to me. I am content to know that, and no more, of you. Do you feel the same about me?”

Martha replied eagerly in the affirmative, and in five minutes the two had come to a perfect understanding. The girl felt her awe at being in “the presence” gradually fading away,

“THE PRINCESS WAS VERY TALL.”

as this winning young woman sat and talked with her on a footing of friendly equality. It was after a short silence between them that the princess said:

“There are one or two things that it will be necessary for you to know—that is, if you like me well enough to come to see me, as I hope you do. I am living in the Rue Presbourg, and when you come to see me, you are to ask for the apartment of the Princess Mannernorff. You will come, will you not?”

“Oh, if you will only let me, it will be my greatest happiness!” said Martha. “I can’t understand what has made you so good to me!”

“Simply, I like you. It isn’t hard to understand. I’ve noticed you a long time, and I’ve liked you more and more. I like your manner; I like your face; I like your devotion to your work; and I like your work.”

“My work! My scratching and smudging, you mean! Oh, howcanyou notice it or care for it when you look at yours? Every one must see that Etienne knows that you are his best pupil. He does not speak to any one as he does to you, and you must know as well as I that it is not because you are a princess.”

“Yes, of course; I know that perfectly well. But I fancy that Etienne, in his little critical heart, feels that he hasn’t got out of me what he looked for at first. At least, I have that idea; and you see I have studied enough, compared with you, to be a great deal further ahead of you than I am. I have digged and delved for that treasure more than you realize. I hope to do something tolerable some day; but I’m not as confident about it as I used to be, and I fear Etienne is not, either. Oh, IwishI could!”

She said this with such fervor, and followed it by such a wistful sigh, that Martha, who had not yet taken in the idea that the princess might not be the all-fortunate creature she imagined, felt a sudden protest against the thought of her wishing for anything vainly.

“Surely you will!” she said. “I can’t imagine your wanting anything very much without getting it.”

The princess laughed, throwing up her chin, and looking at Martha with an indulgent smile.

“You can’t?” she exclaimed. “Well, if you take the trouble to continue my acquaintance, you will find that I’ve missed pretty mucheverything in life that I very greatly wanted. It is sad, but true.”

Martha did not answer, but she looked as if she would like to speak out something that was on her mind, and her companion saw this, and said:

“What is it? Speak! I give you full permission.”

“It was nothing,” said Martha, rather confusedly. “I was wondering about you—as, of course, I can’t help doing. I don’t want to be told things, however. I would far rather imagine how they are.”

“Very, very sensible. I see that I shall like you more and more. There are a few things, however, which it will be well for you to know. For instance,”—she paused, with a slight look of reluctance, and then went on rapidly,—“no doubt you wonder whether I am married.”

Martha’s eyes confirmed her.

A cloud seemed to have settled with surprising suddenness upon the face of the princess. She looked fixedly at the passing prospect outside the window as, after a moment of difficult silence, she said almost brusquely:

“I am a widow.” Then she turned and looked at Martha. “You will understand, forthe future,” she went on more naturally, “my wish for silence on this subject. I am living temporarily in Paris with my aunt. I used to know French society well, but I am out of it now, and I don’t regret it. Painting is the only thing I really care for—that, and music, and some books; some, but not many. Books give such false ideas of life. I think it was what I read in books that led me to expect so much. I was not to be convinced but that all the happiness I imagined was quite possible; and when it would not come to me, I thought there was a force in me which could compel it. As a rule, I’ve given that idea up; but there are times even yet when it rises and conquers me. I know it is very foolish, and that experience cures one of such feelings, but I’m not altogether cured yet, in spite of hard and repeated blows.”

Martha had listened with intense interest, and now, as her companion paused, she felt that she ought to volunteer, on her part, some sort of sketch of herself and her surroundings.

“I don’t care to tell you anything about myself,” she said, “because it’s so uninteresting. My father has been dead a great many years; mama is delicate; and we live in Parisso that I may study painting and the younger girls may have lessons. We go to America for the summers. My brother is the eldest of us, and he lives there. The younger girls are pretty, and mama wishes them to go into society and to be admired. She used also to wish this for me, but she saw how I hated it, and how little chance I had in it, so she lets me alone now, particularly since I got Harold to speak to her.”

“Are you sure that she would not disapprove of your friendship with me, knowing of me only the little that you are able to tell her?”

“Yes; I’m certain of it. She wouldn’t mind. She knows I never get into mischief. I feel perfectly free to do as I choose about this, and I don’t mean to mention you to any one—not because there would be any objection, but because you are too sacred to me, and if you let me be your friend, I can’t share that knowledge and possession with any one.”

Martha was determined to say this, but she did not accomplish it without a good deal of hesitation and embarrassment. Her companion looked at her with a sort of wondering scrutiny.

“Where do you get that earnest, concentrated nature, I wonder—so different from mine!” she said. “Does it go with the American character? Your words are very foolish, child; but it is so long since any one has held me sacred that I am ridiculously touched by it.”

There was something that looked like rising tears in the beautiful eyes of the princess; but a gay little laugh soon banished the shadow from both her face and her voice. Suddenly she sat upright and said:

“Suppose you come home with me now! I want you to learn the ways of the place, so that you may come and go as you please. Will you come with me there to-day?”

Martha agreed at once, and with evident satisfaction the princess leaned out of the window, and gave the address to the cabman.

Martha felt herself in a dream of delight as she descended from the cab, and, following the princess into the courtyard of a large apartment-house in the Rue Presbourg, mounted the stairs at her side.

Their ring was answered by a foreign-looking man-servant, to whom the princess spoke in a tongue which Martha recognized as Russian, but of which she understood not a word. She saw, however, that it related to herself; for the servant, who wore a curious and elaborate livery, looked at her and bowed.

“I have been telling him,” explained the princess, “that whenever you come you are to be brought at once to my private sitting-room, whether I am at home to other people or not. If it should chance that I cannot see you,—an unlikely thing, for I generally do what I want, and I shall always want to see you,—my maid can bring you word there. You see,I am not going to take any risk of having you turned away from my door.”

The antechamber into which they had been admitted was charmingly furnished, not at all in the French style; and there was something in the whole environment of the princess which commended itself strongly to Martha’s artistic taste. Everything that she saw, as she passed along, deepened this impression. She followed her companion in excited silence through the antechamber, and into the large and sunny salon, where two persons were sitting.

One was a little old lady with very white hair, elaborately arranged under a queer-looking lace cap fastened with jeweled pins; the other was a dark and severely dressed woman, who, Martha at once saw, was a sort of companion or maid. As the princess approached, this woman rose and courtesied. The old lady looked up, with some surprise in her placid face, and immediately laid down her embroidery, and took up a silver ear-trumpet, holding out her other hand to the princess.

The latter bent, and kissed the proffered fingers lightly, and then, raising her voice a little, uttered several sentences in Russianinto the trumpet, at the same time indicating Martha in a way that made her understand that this was an introduction. The girl also bent, and kissed the hand now extended to her, and then the princess led her away.

“My poor aunt is so deaf,” she said, “that it is almost impossible to talk to her, and I could not go into any long explanation about you. She never interferes with me, however, and no questions will be asked. Come now to my own room.”

Martha, following her companion, found herself in a small boudoir opening into a bedroom. The door of the latter was open, and the two apartments gave an impression which she told herself she could best describe by the word lovable. The musical instruments stood open. The lounges and chairs seemed to have taken the shapes of their occupants. Flowers that looked as if they had been willingly plucked were all about in vases. Well-worn volumes and drawing-books were scattered about, and some of the princess’s atelier studies were placed against the walls on the floor. Martha, who could hardly believe in her good fortune in having received even the smallest notice from theprincess, was yet more bewildered and delighted when the latter crossed the little boudoir, and led her into the bedroom.

Here the French maid whom Martha had seen at the atelier sat sewing. She stood up, evidently surprised. As she courtesied, and came forward to take her lady’s wraps, the latter hastily threw her cloak to her, and then, striking her hands together with a quick little clap, said:

“Va-t’en, Félicie!”

The maid smiled. She and her mistress evidently understood each other well. Deftly gathering up her work, she left the room, and Martha found herself alone with her divinity, in the privacy of her own bedroom. She felt quite foolishly happy. Perhaps the princess saw it, for she said, with her bewildering smile:

“You like it, do you not? You needn’t explain. I see you do, just as I saw that you liked me, without your saying a word. I am so glad.”

“Likeyou!” said Martha, protestingly. “Oh!”

Then the princess came and stood in front of the young girl, and put her arms around

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