"Princess," I said, "permit me to offer my felicitations on your return
to Paris. This is indeed an unexpected pleasure."
"Ah, M'sieur Ingram!" she cried in charming English, holding forth her
white-gloved hand, "at last! I have been hunting for you all the
evening. All Paris is here, and the crush is terrible. Yes, you see I
am back again."
The Italian Ambassador had risen, bowed, and turned to speak to another
acquaintance; therefore, with her sanction, I dropped into his place.
"And are you pleased to return?" I inquired, glancing at her beautiful
and refined face, which seemed to me just a trifle more careworn than
when I had last met her eighteen months ago.
"Ah!" she answered, "I am always pleased to come back to France. I went
to America for a few months, you know; thence to Vienna, and for nearly
a year have been living at home."
"At Rudolstadt?"
She nodded.
"Well," I said, "it was really too bad of you to hide your existence
from your friends in that manner. Everyone has been wondering for
months what had become of you. Surely you found Rudolstadt very dull
after life here?"
"I did," she sighed, causing the magnificent diamonds at her throat to
sparkle with a thousand fires. "But I have departed from my hermitage
again, you see. Now, sit here and tell me all that has happened during
my absence. Then if you are good, I will, as a reward, give you just
one waltz."
"Very well," I laughed. "Remember that I shall hold you to your
bargain;" and then I commenced to gossip about the movements of people
she had known when, two years before, she had been the most admired
woman in Paris.
The Princess Leonie-Rose-Eugenie von Leutenberg was, according to the
_Almanach de Gotha_--that red, squat little volume so dreaded by the
ladies--only thirty years of age, and was certainly extremely
good-looking. Her pale, half-tragic beauty was sufficient to arrest
attention anywhere. Her noble features were well-moulded and regular,
her eyes of a clear grey, and her hair of flaxen fairness, while her
bearing was ever that of a daughter of the greatest of the Austrian
houses. Her goodness of heart, her gracefulness, her conversational
esprit, and her genuine Parisian chic had rendered her popular
everywhere; while, as with the Duchesse de Berri, one strong point of
her beauty was her charming little foot, which two years ago had been
declared to be the loveliest foot in France, or, in Paris, simply "Le
pied de la Princesse." Her shoes and hosiery were perfect marvels of
fineness and neatness, and when she walked, or rather glided, along the
Avenue des Acacias, the other promenaders formed long rows on each side
to behold and admire le pied de la Princesse.
I had heard it declared, too, with mysterious smiles, how le pied de la
Princesse had been seen more than once at the masked balls at the Opera,
and many an amusing little story had gone the round, and many a piquant
tale had been told of how the Princess had been recognised here and
there by the extreme smallness of her foot. One was that for a wager
she had disguised herself as a work-girl with a bandbox on her arm, and,
attended by her valet, likewise disguised, appeared before the Hotel de
Ville awaiting an omnibus. The vehicle stopped, and the conductor
exclaimed in an indifferent tone, "Entrez, mademoiselle," without taking
any further notice. Then, however, his wandering eye caught sight of a
pair of tiny feet, and, looking into her face in surprise, he
enthusiastically exclaimed: "Ah! ah! le pied de la Princesse!" and
doffed his hat respectfully. The Princess lost her wager, but was in no
little measure proud of the conquest which her foot had won over the
plain omnibus-conductor.
Her life had been a somewhat tragic one. The only daughter of Prince
Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau, the Seigneur of Wchinitz, in Bohemia,
Leonie had, when scarcely out of her teens, been forced to marry the old
Prince Othon von Leutenberg, a man forty years her senior. The marriage
proved an exceedingly unhappy one, for he treated her brutally, and
after five years of a wretched existence, during which she bore herself
with great patience and forbearance, the Prince died of alcoholism in
Berlin, and her release brought her into possession of an enormous
fortune, together with the mansion of the Leutenbergs in the Frieung at
Vienna, one of the finest in the Austrian capital, the castle and
extensive estates in Schwazbourg-Rudolstadt, that had belonged to the
family from feudal days, as well as the hotel in the Avenue du Bois de
Boulogne, and the beautiful Chateau de Chantoiseau, deep in the forest
of Fontainebleau.
She was very charming, and there was an air of sadness in her beauty
that made her the more interesting. We were friends of long standing.
Indeed, I had known her in the days when I was junior attache and
fancied myself in love with every woman. I had admired her, and a firm
friendship existed between us, although I think I can say honestly that
I had never fallen in love with her. More than once, when those false
and scandalous tales had been whispered about her--as they are whispered
about every pretty woman in Paris--I had constituted myself her
champion, and challenged her traducers to prove their words.
As we sat there chatting, watching the gaily uniformed corps
diplomatique, and bowing ever and anon as some man or woman came up to
congratulate her on her return to Paris, she told me of the dreariness
of her life in the gloomy, ancestral Castle of Rudolstadt, and how,
finding it unendurable at last, she had suddenly resolved to spend the
remainder of the summer at Chantoiseau.
"I have been there already a fortnight, and everything is in order," she
said. "I am inviting quite a number of people. You must come also."
"But I scarcely think it is possible for me to be absent from Paris just
now," I answered in hesitation.
"I will take no refusal," she said decisively. "I will talk to Lord
Barmouth to-night before I leave. Me never refuses me anything.
Besides, in two hours you can always be at the Embassy. You will
remember, the last time you were my guest, how easy you found the
journey to and from Paris. Why, you often used to leave in the morning
and return at night. No, you cannot refuse."
"I must consult His Excellency before accepting," I replied. "In the
meantime, Princess, I thank you for your kind invitation."
"Princess?" she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows. "Why not Leonie? I
was Leonie to you always in the days gone by. Is there any reason why
you should be so distant now? Unless--" and she paused.
"Unless what?" I inquired, looking at her swiftly.
"Unless you have a really serious affair of the heart," she said.
"I have none," I answered promptly, suppressing a sigh with difficulty.
"Then do not use my title. I hate my friends to call me Princess.
Recollect that to you I am always Leonie."
"Very well," I laughed, for she was full of quaint caprice.
I had pleasant recollections of my last visit to the chateau, and hoped
that if the theft of the instructions contained in the despatch I had
brought from London produced no serious international complication, I
should obtain leave to join her house-party, which was certain to be a
smart and merry one.
She told me the names of some she had invited. Among those known to me
were the Baroness de Chalencon, Count de Hindenburg, the German
Ambassador, and his wife, and Count de Wolkenstein, Austrian Ambassador,
as well as several other men and women of the smartest set in Paris.
"You will be a real benefactress," I laughed. "Everyone here is
stifled; while Dieppe is too crowded; Aix, with its eternal Villa des
Fleurs, is insupportable; and both Royat and Vichy are full to
overflowing."
"Ah, mon cher Gerald!" cried the Princess, lifting her small hands, "it
is your English tourists who have spoilt all our summer resorts. If one
has no place of one's own in which to spend the summer nowadays, one
must herd with the holders of tourist tickets and hotel coupons."
I admitted that what she said was in a great measure true. Society, as
the grande dame knows it, is being expelled by the tourists from the
places which until a year or two ago were expensive and exclusive. Even
the Riviera is fast becoming a cheap winter resort, for Nice now
deserves to be called the Margate of the Continent.
Having arranged that I should do my best to accept her invitation, our
conversation drifted to politics, art, and the drama. She seemed in
utter ignorance of recent events, except such as she had read about in
the newspapers.
"I know nothing," she laughed. "News reaches Rudolstadt tardily, and
then only by the journals; and you know how unreliable they are. How
I've longed time after time to spend an evening in Paris to hear all the
gossip! It is charming, I assure you, to be back here again."
"But for what reason did you shut yourself up for so long?" I asked.
"It surely is not like you!"
She grew grave in an instant, and appeared to hesitate. Her lips closed
tightly, and there was a hard expression at the corners of her
well-shaped mouth.
"I had my reasons--strong ones."
"What were they?"
"Well, I was tired of it all."
"Leonie," I said, looking at her seriously, "pray forgive me, but you do
not intend to tell me the truth. You were tired of it years ago, when
the Prince was alive."
"That was so," she answered, with a glance of triumph; "and I went home
to my father and shut myself up at Wchinitz."
"But you must have had some stronger motive in burying yourself again as
you have recently done. You did not write to a soul, and no one knew
where you were. You simply dropped out; and you had some reason for
doing so, otherwise you would have told the truth to your most intimate
friends."
"You are annoyed that I should have left you without a word--eh?" she
asked. "Well, I will apologise now."
"No apology is necessary," I answered. "It is only because we are such
good friends that I venture to speak thus. I feel confident that you
have sustained some great sorrow. You are, somehow, not the same as you
were in Paris two years ago; now, tell me--"
"Ah! Do not talk of it!" she cried huskily, rising to her feet. "Let
us drop the subject. Promise me, Gerald, not to mention it again, for I
confess to you that it is too painful--much too painful. I promised you
a waltz. Come, let us dance."
Thus bidden, I rose, and she, twisting her skirts deftly in her hand,
leaned lightly upon my arm as I conducted her to the great ballroom. A
very few moments later we glided together into the whirling, dazzling
crowd.
"You will not speak of that again, Gerald?" she urged in a hoarse
whisper, looking earnestly up to my face, as her head came near my
shoulder. "Promise me."
"If it is your wish, Leonie," I responded, puzzled, "I will ask no
further question."