St. Petersburg under snow is the most picturesque city in the world. The town is at its best when a high wind has come from the north to blow all the snow from the cupola of St. Isaac’s, leaving that golden dome, in all its brilliancy, to gleam and flash over the whitened sepulchre of a city.
In winter the Neva is a broad, silent thoroughfare between the Vassili Ostrow and the Admiralty Gardens. In the winter the pestilential rattle of the cobble-stones in the side streets is at last silent, and the merry music of sleigh-bells takes its place. In the winter the depressing damp of this northern Venice is crystallized and harmless.
On the English Quay a tall, narrow house stands looking glumly across the river. It is a suspected house, and watched; for here dwelt Stipan Lanovitch, secretary and organizer of the Charity League.
Although the outward appearance of the house is uninviting, the interior is warm and dainty. The odor of delicate hot-house plants is in the slightly enervating atmosphere of the apartments. It is a Russian fancy to fill the dwelling-rooms with delicate, forced foliage and bloom. In no country of the world are flowers so worshipped, is money so freely spent in floral decoration. There is something in the sight, and more especially in the scent of hot-house plants, that appeals to the complex siftings of three races which constitute a modern Russian.
We, in the modest self-depreciation which is a national characteristic, are in the habit of thinking, and sometimes saying, that we have all the good points of the Angle and the Saxon rolled satisfactorily into one Anglo-Saxon whole. We are of the opinion that mixed races are the best, and we leave it to be understood that ours is the only satisfactory combination. Most of us ignore the fact that there are others at all, and very few indeed recognize the fact that the Russian of to-day is essentially a modern outcome of a triple racial alliance of which the best component is the Tartar.
The modern Russian is an interesting study, because he has the remnant of barbaric tastes, with ultra-civilized facilities for gratifying the same. The best part of him comes from the East, the worst from Paris.
The Countess Lanovitch belonged to the school existing in Petersburg and Moscow in the early years of the century—the school that did not speak Russian but only French, that chose to class the peasants with the beasts of the field, that apparently expected the deluge to follow soon.
Her drawing-room, looking out on to the Neva, was characteristic of herself. Camellias held the floral honors in vase and pot. The French novel ruled supreme on the side-table. The room was too hot, the chairs were too soft, the moral atmosphere too lax. One could tell that this was the dwelling-room of a lazy, self-indulgent, and probably ignorant woman.
The countess herself in nowise contradicted this conclusion. She was seated on a very low chair, exposing a slippered foot to the flame of a wood fire. She held a magazine in her hand, and yawned as she turned its pages. She was not so stout in person as her loose and somewhat highly colored cheeks would imply. Her eyes were dull and sleepy. The woman was an incarnate yawn.
She looked up, turning lazily in her chair, to note the darkening of the air without the double windows.
“Ah!” she said aloud to herself in French, “when will it be tea-time?”
As she spoke the words, the bells of a sleigh suddenly stopped with a rattle beneath the window.
Immediately the countess rose and went to the mirror over the mantel-piece. She arranged without enthusiasm her straggling hair, and put straight a lace cap which was chronically crooked. She looked at her reflection pessimistically, as well she might. It was the puffy red face of a middle-aged woman given to petty self-indulgence.
“While she was engaged in this discouraging pastime the door was opened, and a maid came in with the air of one who has gained a trifling advantage by the simple method of peeping.
“It is M. Steinmetz, Mme. la Comtesse.”
“Ah! Do I look horrible, Cilestine? I have been asleep.”
Cilestine was French, and laughed with all the charm of that tactful nation.
“How can Mme. la Comtesse ask such a thing? Madame might be thirty-five!”
It is to be supposed that the staff of angelic recorders have a separate set of ledgers for French people, with special discounts attaching to pleasant lies.
Madame shook her head—and believed.
“M. Steinmetz is even now taking off his furs in the hall,” said Cilestine, retiring toward the door.
“It is well. We shall want tea.”
Steinmetz came into the room with an exaggerated bow and a twinkle in his melancholy eyes.
“Figure to yourself, my dear Steinmetz,” said the countess vivaciously. “Catrina has gone out—on a day like this! Mon Dieu! How gray, how melancholy!”
“Without, yes! But here, how different!” replied Steinmetz in French.
The countess cackled and pointed to a chair.
“Ah! you always flatter. What news have you, bad character?”
Steinmetz smiled pensively, not so much suggesting the desire to impart as the intention to withhold that which the lady called news.
“I came for yours, countess. You are always amusing—as well as beautiful,” he added, with his mouth well controlled beneath the heavy mustache.
The countess shook her head playfully, which had the effect of tilting her cap to one side.
“I! Oh, I have nothing to tell you. I am a nun. What can one do—what can one hear in Petersburg? Now in Paris it is different. But Catrina is so firm. Have you ever noticed that, Steinmetz? Catrina’s firmness, I mean. She wills a thing, and her will is like a rock. The thing has to be done. It does itself. It comes to pass. Some people are so. Now I, my clear Steinmetz, only desire peace and quiet. So I give in. I gave in to poor Stipan. And now he is exiled. Perhaps if I had been firm—if I had forbidden all this nonsense about charity—it would have been different. And Stipan would have been quietly at home instead of in Tomsk, is it, or Tobolsk? I always forget which. Well, Catrina says we must live in Petersburg this winter, and—nous voil`!”
Steinmetz shrugged his shoulders with a commiserating smile. He took the countess’s troubles indifferently, as do the rest of us when our neighbor’s burden does not drag upon our own shoulders. It suited him that Catrina should be in Petersburg, and it is to be feared that the feelings of the Countess Lanovitch had no weight as against the convenience of Karl Steinmetz.
“Ah, well!” he said, “you must console yourself with the thought that Petersburg is the brighter for some of us. Who is this—another visitor?”
The door was thrown open, and Claude de Chauxville walked into the room with the easy grace which was his.
“Mme. la Comtesse,” he said, bowing over her hand.
Then he stood upright, and the two men smiled grimly at each other. Steinmetz had thought that De Chauxville was in London. The Frenchman counted on the other’s duties to retain him in Osterno.
“Pleasure!” said De Chauxville, shaking hands.
“It is mine,” answered Steinmetz.
The countess looked from one to the other with a smile on her foolish face.
“Ah!” she exclaimed; “how pleasant it is to meet old friends! It is like by-gone times.”
At this moment the door opened again and Catrina came in. In her rich furs she looked almost pretty.
She shook hands eagerly with Steinmetz; her deep eyes searched his face with a singular, breathless scrutiny.
“Where are you from?” she asked quickly.
“London.”
“Catrina,” broke in the countess, “you do not remember M. de Chauxville! He nursed you when you were a child.”
Catrina turned and bowed to De Chauxville.
“I should have remembered you,” he said, “if we had met accidentally. After all, childhood is but a miniature—is it not so?”
“Perhaps,” answered Catrina; “and when the miniature develops it loses the delicacy which was its chief charm.”
She turned again to Steinmetz, as if desirous of continuing her conversation with him.
“M. de Chauxville, you surely have news?” broke in the countess’s cackling voice. “I have begged M. Steinmetz in vain. He says he has none; but is one to believe so notorious a bad character?”
“Madame, it is wise to believe only that which is convenient. But Steinmetz, I promise you, is the soul of honor. What sort of news do you crave for? Political, which is dangerous; social, which is scandalous; or court news, which is invariably false?”
“Let us have scandal, then.”
“Ah! I must refer you to the soul of honor.”
“Who,” answered Steinmetz, “in that official capacity is necessarily deaf, and in a private capacity is naturally dull.”
He was looking very hard at De Chauxville, as if he was attempting to make him understand something which he could not say aloud. De Chauxville, from carelessness or natural perversity, chose to ignore the persistent eyes.
“Surely the news is from London,” he said lightly; “we have nothing from Paris.”
He glanced at Steinmetz, who was frowning.
“I can hardly tell you stale news that comes from London via Paris, can I?” he continued.
Steinmetz was tapping impatiently on the floor with his broad boot.
“About whom—about whom?” cried the countess, clapping her soft hands together.
“Well, about Prince Paul,” said De Chauxville, looking at Steinmetz with airy defiance.
Steinmetz moved a little. He placed himself in front of Catrina, who had suddenly lost color. She could only see his broad back. The others in the room could not see her at all. She was rather small, and Steinmetz hid her as behind a screen.
“Ah!” he said to the countess, “his marriage! But Madame the Countess assuredly knows of that.”
“How could she?” put in De Chauxville.
“The countess knew that Prince Paul was going to be married,” explained Karl Steinmetz very slowly, as if he wished to give some one time. “With such a man as he, ‘going to be’ is not very far from being.”
“Then it is an accomplished fact?” said the countess sharply.
“Yesterday,” answered Steinmetz.
“And you were not there!” exclaimed Countess Lanovitch, with uplifted hands.
“Since I was here,” answered Steinmetz.
The countess launched into a disquisition on the heinousness of marrying any but a compatriot. The tone of her voice was sharp, and the volume of her words almost amounted to invective. As Steinmetz was obviously not listening, the lady imparted her views to the Baron de Chauxville.
Steinmetz waited for some time, then he turned slowly toward Catrina without actually looking at her.
“It is dangerous,” he said, “to stay in this warm room with your furs.”
“Yes,” she answered, rather faintly; “I will go and take them off.”
Steinmetz held the door open for her, but he did not look at her.
“But I confess I cannot understand why I should not be called the Princess Alexis—there is nothing to be ashamed of in the title. I presume you have a right to it?”
Etta looked up from her occupation of fixing a bracelet, with a little glance of enquiry toward her husband.
They had been married a month. The honeymoon—a short one—had been passed in the house of a friend, indeed a relation of Etta’s own, a Scotch peer who was not above lending a shooting-lodge in Scotland on the tacit understanding that there should be some quid pro quo in the future.
In answer Paul merely smiled, affectionately tolerant of her bright sharpness of manner. Your bright woman in society is apt to be keen at home. What is called vivacity abroad may easily degenerate into snappiness by the hearth.
“I think it is rather ridiculous being called plain Mrs. Howard-Alexis,” added Etta, with a pout.
They were going to a ball—the first since their marriage. They had just dined, and Paul had followed his wife into the drawing-room. He took a simple-minded delight in her beauty, which was of the description that is at its best in a gorgeous setting. He stood looking at her, noting her grace, her pretty, studied movements. There were, he reflected, few women more beautiful—none, in his own estimation, fit to compare with her.
She had hitherto been sweetness itself to him, enlivening his lonely existence, shining suddenly upon his self-contained nature with a brilliancy that made him feel dull and tongue-tied.
Already, however, he was beginning to discover certain small differences, not so much of opinion as of thought, between Etta and himself. She attached an importance to social function, to social opinion, to social duties, which he in no wise understood. Invitations were showered upon them. A man who is a prince and prefers to drop the title need not seek popularity in London. The very respectable reader probably knows as well as his humble servant, the writer, that in London there is always a social circle just a little lower than one’s own which opens its doors with noble, disinterested hospitality, and is prepared to lick the blacking from any famous foot.
These invitations Etta accepted eagerly. Some women hold it little short of a crime to refuse an invitation, and go through life regretting that there is only one evening to each day. To Paul these calls were nothing new. His secretary had hitherto drawn a handsome salary for doing little more than refuse such.
It was in Etta’s nature to be somewhat carried away by glitter. A great ball-room, brilliant illumination, music, flowers, and diamonds had an effect upon her which she enjoyed in anticipation. Her eyes gleamed brightly on reading the mere card of invitation. Some dull and self-contained men are only to be roused by the clatter and whirl of a battle-field, and this stirs them into brilliancy, changing them to new men. Etta, always brilliant, always bright, exceeded herself on her battle-field—a great social function.
Since their marriage she had never been so beautiful, her eyes had never been so sparkling, her color so brilliant as at this moment when she asked her husband to let her use her title. Hers was the beauty that blooms not for one man alone, but for the multitude; that feeds not on the love of one, but on the admiration of many. The murmur of the man in the street who turned and stared into her carriage was more than the devotion of her husband.
“A foreign title,” answered Paul, “is nothing in England. I soon found that out at Eton and at Trinity. It was impossible there. I dropped it, and I have never taken it up again.”
“Yes, you old stupid, and you have never taken the place you are entitled to, in consequence.”
“What place? May I button that?”
“Thanks.”
She held out her arm while he, with fingers much too large for such dainty work, buttoned her glove.
“The place in society,” she answered.
“Oh; does that matter? I never thought of it.”
“Of course it matters,” answered the lady, with an astonished little laugh. (It is wonderful what an importance we attach to that which has been dearly won.) “Of course it matters,” answered Etta; “more than—well, more than any thing.”
“But the position that depends upon a foreign title cannot be of much value,” said the pupil of Karl Steinmetz.
Etta shook her pretty head reflectively.
“Of course,” she answered, “money makes a position of its own, and every-body knows that you are a prince; but it would be nicer, with the servants and every-body, to be a princess.”
“I am afraid I cannot do it,” said Paul.
“Then there is some reason for it,” answered his wife, looking at him sharply.
“Yes, there is.”
“Ah!”
“The reason is the responsibility that attaches to the very title you wish to wear.”
The lady smiled, a little scornfully perhaps.
“Oh! Your grubby old peasants, I suppose,” she said.
“Yes. You remember, Etta, what I told you before we were married—about the people, I mean?”
“Oh, yes!” answered Etta, glancing at the clock and hiding a little yawn behind her fan.
“I did not tell you all,” went on Paul, “partly because it was inexpedient, partly because I feared it might bore you. I only told you that I was vaguely interested in the peasants, and thought it would be a good thing if they could be gradually educated into a greater self-respect, a greater regard for cleanliness and that sort of thing.”
“Yes, dear, I remember,” answered Etta, listlessly contemplating her gloved hands.
“Well, I have not contented myself with thinking this during the last two or three years. I have tried to put it into practice. Steinmetz and I have lived at Osterno six months of the year on purpose to organize matters on the estate. I was deeply implicated in the—Charity League—”
Etta dropped her fan with a clatter into the fender.
“Oh! I hope it is not broken,” she gasped, with a singular breathlessness.
“I do not think so,” replied Paul, picking up the fan and returning it to her. “Why, you look quite white! What does it matter if it is broken? You have others.”
“Yes, but—” Etta paused, opening the fan and examining the sticks so closely that her face was hidden by the feathers. “Yes, but I like this one. What is the Charity League, dear?”
“It was a large organization gotten up by the hereditary nobles of Russia to educate the people and better their circumstances by discriminate charity. Of course it had to be kept secret, as the bureaucracy is against any attempt to civilize the people—against education or the dissemination of news. The thing was organized. We were just getting to work when some one stole the papers of the League from the house of Count Stipan Lanovitch and sold them to the Government. The whole thing was broken up; Lanovitch and others were exiled, I bolted home, and Steinmetz faced the storm alone in Osterno. He was too clever for them, and nothing was brought home to us. But you will understand that it is necessary for us to avoid any notoriety, to live as quietly and privately as possible.”
“Yes, of course; but—”
“But what?”
“You can never go back to Russia,” said Etta slowly, feeling her ground, as it were.
“Oh, yes, I can. I was just coming to that. I want to go back this winter. There is so much to be done. And I want you to come with me.”
“No, Paul. No, no! I couldn’t do that!” cried Etta, with a ring of horror in her voice, strangely out of keeping with her peaceful and luxurious surroundings.
“Why not?” asked the man who had never known fear.
“Oh, I should be afraid. I couldn’t. I hate Russia!”
“But you don’t know it.”
“No,” answered Etta, turning away and busying herself with her long silken train. “No, of course not. Only Petersburg, I mean. But I have heard what it is. So cold and dismal and miserable. I feel the cold so horribly. I wanted to go to the Riviera this winter. I really think, Paul, you are asking me too much.”
“I am only asking a proof that you care for me.”
Etta gave a little laugh—a nervous laugh with no mirth in it.
“A proof! But that is so bourgeois and unnecessary. Haven’t you proof enough, since I am your wife?”
Paul looked at her without any sign of yielding. His attitude, his whole being, was expressive of that immovability of purpose which had hitherto been concealed from her by his quiet manner. Steinmetz knew of the mental barrier within this Anglo-Russian soul, against which prayer and argument were alike unavailing. The German had run against it once or twice in the course of their joint labors, and had invariably given way at once.
Etta looked at him. The color was coming back to her face in patches. There was something unsteady in her eyes—something suggesting that for the first time in her life she was daunted by a man. It was not Paul’s speech, but his silence that alarmed her. She felt that trivial arguments, small feminine reasons, were without weight.
“Now that you are married,” she said, “I do not think you have any right to risk your life and your position for a fad.”
“I have done it with impunity for the last two or three years,” he answered. “With ordinary precautions the risk is small. I have begun the thing now; I must go on with it.”
“But the country is not safe for us—for you.”
“Oh, yes, it is,” answered Paul. “As safe as ever it has been.”
Etta paused. She turned round and looked into the fire. He could not see her face.
“Then the Ch—Charity League is forgotten?” she said.
“No,” answered her husband quietly. “It will not be forgotten until we have found out who sold us to the Government.”
Etta’s lips moved in a singular way. She drew them in and held them with her teeth. For a moment her beautiful face wore a hunted expression of fear.
“What will you gain by that?” she asked evenly.
“I? Oh, nothing. I do not care one way or the other. But there are some people who want the man—very much.”
Etta drew in a long, deep breath.
“I will go to Osterno with you, if you like,” she said. “Only—only I must have Maggie with me.”
“Yes, if you like,” answered Paul, in some surprise.
The clock struck ten, and Etta’s eyes recovered their brightness. Womanlike, she lived for the present. The responsibility of the future is essentially a man’s affair. The present contained a ball, and it was only in the future that Osterno and Russia had to be faced. Let us also give Etta Alexis her due. She was almost fearless. It is permissible to the bravest to be startled. She was now quite collected. The even, delicate color had returned to her face.
“Maggie is such a splendid companion,” she said lightly. “She is so easy to please. I think she would come if you asked her, Paul.”
“If you want her, I shall ask her, of course; but it may hinder us a little. I thought you might be able to help us—with the women, you know.”
There was a queer little smile on Etta’s face—a smile, one might have thought, of contempt.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “It is so nice to be able to do good with one’s money.”
Paul looked at her in his slow, grave way, but he said nothing. He knew that his wife was cleverer and brighter than himself. He was simple enough to think that this superiority of intellect might be devoted to the good of the peasants of Osterno.
“It is not a bad place,” he said—“a very fine castle, one of the finest in Europe. Before I came away I gave orders for your rooms to be done up. I should like every thing to be nice for you.”
“I know you would, dear,” she answered, glancing at the clock. (The carriage was ordered for a quarter-past ten.) “But I suppose,” she went on, “that, socially speaking, we shall be rather isolated. Our neighbors are few and far between.”
“The nearest,” said Paul quietly, “are the Lanovitches.”
“Who?”
“The Lanovitches. Do you know them?”
“Of course not,” answered Etta sharply. “But I seem to know the name. Were there any in St. Petersburg?”
“The same people,” answered Paul; “Count Stipan Lanovitch.”
Etta was looking at her husband with her bright smile. It was a little too bright, perhaps. Her eyes had a gleam in them. She was conscious of being beautifully dressed, conscious of her own matchless beauty, almost dauntless, like a very strong man armed.
“Well, I think I am a model wife,” she said: “to give in meekly to your tyranny; to go and bury myself in the heart of Russia in the middle of winter—By the way, we must buy some furs; that will be rather exciting. But you must not expect me to be very intimate with your Russian friends. I am not quite sure that I like Russians”—she went toward him, laying her two hands gently on his broad breast and looking up at him—“not quite sure—especially Russian princes who bully their wives. You may kiss me, however, but be very careful. Now I must go and finish dressing. We shall be late as it is.”
She gathered together her fan and gloves, for she had petulantly dragged off a pair which did not fit.
“And you will ask Maggie to come with us?” she said.
He held open the door for her to pass out, gravely polite even to his wife—this old-fashioned man.
“Yes,” he answered; “but why do you want me to ask her?”
“Because I want her to come.”
In these democratic days a very democratic theory has exploded. Not so very long ago we believed, or made semblance of belief, that it is useless to put a high price upon a ticket with the object of securing that selectness for which the high-born crave. “If they want to come,” Lady Champignon (wife of Alderman Champignon) would say, “they do not mind paying the extra half-guinea.”
But Lady Champignon was wrong. It is not that the self-made man cannot or will not pay two guineas for a ball-ticket. It is merely that, in his commercial way, he thinks that he will not have his money’s worth, and therefore prefers keeping his two guineas to spend on something more tangible—say food. The nouveau riche never quite purges his mind of the instinct commercial, and it therefore goes against the grain to pay heavily for a form of entertainment which his soul had not the opportunity of learning to love in its youth. The aristocrat, on the other hand, has usually been brought up to the cultivation of enjoyment, and he therefore spends with perfect equanimity more on his pleasure than the bourgeois mind can countenance.
The ball to which Paul and Etta were going was managed by some titled ladies who knew their business well. The price of the tickets was fabulous. The lady patronesses of the great Charity Ball were tactful and unabashed. They drew the necessary line (never more necessary than it is to-day) with a firm hand.
The success of the ball was therefore a foregone conclusion. In French fiction there is invariably a murmur of applause when the heroine enters a room full of people, which fact serves, at all events, to show the breeding and social status of persons with whom French novelists are in the habit of associating. There was therefore no applause when Paul and Etta made their appearance, but that lady had, nevertheless, the satisfaction of perceiving glances, not only of admiration, but of interest and even of disapproval, among her own sex. Her dress she knew to be perfect, and when she perceived the craning pale face of the inevitable lady-journalist, peering between the balusters of a gallery, she thoughtfully took up a prominent position immediately beneath that gallery, and slowly turned round like a beautifully garnished joint before the fire of cheap publicity.
To Paul this ball was much like others. There were a number of the friends of his youth—tall, clean-featured, clean-limbed men, with a tendency toward length and spareness—who greeted him almost affectionately. Some of them introduced him to their wives and sisters, which ladies duly set him down as nice but dull—a form of faint praise which failed to damn. There were a number of ladies to whom it was necessary for him to bow in acknowledgment of past favors which had missed their mark. From the gallery the washed-out female journalists poked out their eager faces—for they were women still, and liked to look upon a man when he was strong.
And all the while Karl Steinmetz was storming in his guttural English at the door, upbraiding hired waiters for their stupidity in accepting two literal facts literally. The one fact was that they were forbidden to admit any one without a ticket; the second fact being that tickets were not to be obtained at the price of either one or the other of the two great motives of man—Love or Money.
Steinmetz was Teutonic and imposing, with the ribbon of a great Order on his breast. He mentioned the names of several ladies who might have been, but were not, of the committee. Finally, however, he mentioned the historic name of one whose husband had braved more than one Russian emperor successfully for England.
“Yes, me lord, her ladyship’s here,” answered the man.
Steinmetz wrote on a card, “In memory of ‘56, let me in,” and sent in the missive.
A few minutes later a stout, smiling lady came toward him with outstretched hand.
“What mischief are you about?” she enquired, “you stormy petrel! This is no place for your deep-laid machinations. We are here to enjoy ourselves and found a hospital. Come in, however. I am delighted to see you. You used to be a famous dancer—well, some little time ago.”
“Yes, my dear countess, let us say some little time ago. Ach, those were days! those were days! You do not mind the liberty I have taken?”
“I am glad you took it. But your card gave me a little tug at the heart. It brought back so much. And still plain Karl Steinmetz—after all. We used to think much of you in the old days. Who would have thought that all the honors would have slipped past you?”
Steinmetz shrugged his shoulders with a heart-whole laugh.
“Ah, what matter? Who cares, so long as my old friends remember me? Who would have thought, my dear madam, that the map of Europe would have been painted the colors it is to-day? It was a kaleidoscope—the clatter of many stools, and I fell down between them all. Still plain Karl Steinmetz—still very much at your service. Shall I send my check for five guineas to you?”
“Yes, do; I am secretary. Always businesslike; a wonderful man you are still.”
“And you, my dear countess, a wonderful lady. Always gay, always courageous. I have heard and sympathized. I have heard of many blows and wounds that you have received in the battle we began—well, some little time ago.”
“Ah, don’t mention them! They hurt none the less because we cover them with a smile, eh? I dare say you know. You have been in the thick of the fight yourself. But you did not come here to chat with me, though your manner might lead one to think so. I will not keep you.”
“I came to see Prince Pavlo,” answered Steinmetz. “I must thank you for enabling me to do so. I may not see you again this evening. My best thanks, my very dear lady.”
He bowed, and with his half-humorous, half-melancholy smile, left her.
The first face he recognized was a pretty one. Miss Maggie Delafield was just turning away from a partner who was taking his congi, when she looked across the room and saw Steinmetz. He had only met her once, barely exchanging six words with her, and her frank, friendly bow was rather a surprise to him. She came toward him, holding out her hand with an open friendliness which this young lady was in the habit of bestowing upon men and women impartially—upon persons of either sex who happened to meet with her approval. She did not know what made her incline to like this man, neither did she seek to know. In a quiet, British way Miss Delafield was a creature of impulse. Her likes and dislikes were a matter of instinct, and, much as one respects the doctrine of charity, it is a question whether an instinctive dislike should be quashed by an exaggerated sense of neighborly duty. Steinmetz she liked, and there was an end to it.
“I was afraid you did not recognize me,” she said.
“My life has not so many pleasures that I can afford to forget one of them,” replied Steinmetz, in his somewhat old-fashioned courtesy. “But an old—buffer, shall I say?—hardly expects to be taken much notice of by young ladies at a ball.”
“It is not ten minutes since Paul assured me that you were the best dancer that Vienna ever produced,” said the girl, looking at him with bright, honest eyes.
Karl Steinmetz looked down at her, for he was a tall man when Paul Alexis was not near. His quiet gray eyes were almost affectionate. There was a sudden sympathy between these two, and sudden sympathies are the best.
“Will you give an old man a trial?” he asked. “They will laugh at you.”
She handed him her programme.
“Let them laugh!” she said.
He took the next dance, which happened to be vacant on her card. Almost immediately the music began, and they glided off together. Maggie began with the feeling that she was dancing with her own father, but this wore off before they had made much progress through the crowd, and gave way to the sensation that she had for partner the best dancer she had ever met, gray-haired, stout, and middle-aged.
“I wanted to speak to you,” she said.
“Ah!” Steinmetz answered. He was steering with infinite skill. In that room full of dancers no one touched Maggie’s elbow or the swing of her dress, and she, who knew what such things meant, smiled as she noted it.
“I have been asked to go and stay at Osterno,” she said. “Shall I go?”
“By whom?”
“By Paul.”
“Then go,” said Steinmetz, making one of the few mistakes of his life.
“You think so—you want me to go?”
“Ach! you must not put it like that. How well you dance—colossal! But it does not affect me—your going, fra|lein.”
“Since you will be there?”
“Does that make a difference, my dear young lady?”
“Of course it does.”
“I wonder why.”
“So do I,” answered Maggie frankly. “I wonder why. I have been wondering why, ever since Paul asked me. If you had not been going I should have said ‘No’ at once.”
Karl Steinmetz laughed quietly.
“What do I represent?” he asked.
“Safety,” she replied at once.
She gave a queer little laugh and went on dancing.
“And Paul?” he said, after a little while.
“Strength,” replied Maggie promptly.
He looked down at her—a momentary glance of wonder. He was like a woman, inasmuch as he judged a person by a flicker of the eyelids—a glance, a silence—in preference to judging by the spoken word.
“Then with us both to take care of you, may we hope that you will brave the perils of Osterno? Ah—the music is stopping.”
“If I may assure my mother that there are no perils.”
Something took place beneath the gray mustache—a smile or a pursing up of the lips in doubt.
“Ah, I cannot go so far as that. You may assure Lady Delafield that I will protect you as I would my own daughter. If—well, if the good God in heaven had not had other uses for me I should have had a daughter of your age. Ach! the music has stopped. The music always does stop, Miss Delafield; that is the worst of it. Thank you for dancing with an old buffer.”
He took her back to her chaperon, bowed in his old-world way to both ladies, and left them.
“If I can help it, my very dear young friend,” he said to himself as he crossed the room, looking for Paul, “you will not go to Osterno.”
He found Paul talking to two men.
“You here!” said Paul, in surprise.
“Yes,” answered Steinmetz, shaking hands. “I gave Lady Fontain five guineas to let me in, and now I want a couple of chairs and a quiet corner, if the money includes such.”
“Come up into the gallery,” replied Paul.
A certain listlessness which had been his a moment before vanished when Paul recognized his friend. He led the way up the narrow stairs. In the gallery they found a few people—couples seeking, like themselves, a rare solitude.
“What news?” asked Paul, sitting down.
“Bad!” replied Steinmetz. “We have had the misfortune to make a dangerous enemy—Claude de Chauxville.”
“Claude de Chauxville,” repeated Paul.
“Yes. He wanted to marry your wife—for her money.”
Paul leaned forward and dragged at his great fair mustache. He was not a subtle man, analyzing his own thoughts. Had he been, he might have wondered why he was not more jealous in respect to Etta.
“Or,” went on Steinmetz, “it may have been—the other thing. It is a singular thing that many men incapable of a lifelong love, can conceive a lifelong hatred based on that love. Claude de Chauxville has hated me all his life; for very good reasons, no doubt. You are now included in his antipathy because you married madame.”
“I dare say,” replied Paul carelessly. “But I am not afraid of Claude de Chauxville, or any other man.”
“I am,” said Steinmetz. “He is up to some mischief. I was calling on the Countess Lanovitch in Petersburg when in walked Claude de Chauxville. He was constrained at the sight of my stout person, and showed it, which was a mistake. Now, what is he doing in Petersburg? He has not been there for ten years, at least. He has no friends there. He revived a minute acquaintance with the Countess Lanovitch, who is a fool of the very first water. Before I came away I heard from Catrina that he had wheedled an invitation to Thors out of the old lady. Why, my friend, why?”
Paul reflected, with a frown.
“We do not want him out there,” he said.
“No; and if he goes there you must remain in England this winter.”
Paul looked up sharply.
“I do not want to do that. It is all arranged,” he said. “Etta was very much against going at first, but I persuaded her to do so. It would be a mistake not to go now.”
Looking at him gravely, Steinmetz muttered, “I advise you not to go.”
Paul shrugged his shoulders.
“I am sorry,” he said. “It is too late now. Besides, I have invited Miss Delafield, and she has practically accepted.”
“Does that matter?” asked Steinmetz quietly.
“Yes. I do not want her to think that I am a changeable sort of person.”
Steinmetz rose, and standing with his two hands on the marble rail he looked down into the room below. The music of a waltz was just beginning, and some of the more enthusiastic spirits had already begun dancing, moving in and out among the uniforms and gay dresses.
“Well,” he said resignedly; “it is as you will. There is a certain pleasure in outwitting De Chauxville. He is so d—d clever!”