GG
MOTHS.
:
thought the sister of Zouroff; but she said aloud,
' ' That is my brother's misfortune, not his fault.
Vera, ask this Boi Soleil to shine on our house.
He is obstinate to me. Perhaps he will not be
so to you."
Vere did not lift her eyes; her face flushed a
little as she turned towards him.
" We should be happy if you would break
your rule—for us."
She spoke with effort; she could not forget
what he had said on his knees before her in the
little church at Old Ausse.    Corrèze bowed.
" I will come for an hour, mes princesses, and
I will sing for you both.
Then he made his adieu and went away.
Vere and her sister-in-law returned to the
house. Madame Nelaguine was unusually
grave.
When they went home, they found the news-
papers of the day: the slightest and wittiest of
them contained a florid account of the rescue
from a sea-storm of a Russian princess by Cor-
reze. Without a name the Russian princess
was so described that all her world could
know beyond doubt who it was.
" Really position is a pillory nowadays," said
Madame Nelaguine, angrily: " sometimes they
pelt one with rose-leaves and sometimes with
rotten eggs, but one is forever in the pillory."
When Sergius Zouroff read it he was very en-
raged
"Patience," said his sister, dryly, when his
wife was out of hearing. " In to-morrow's
number I dare say they will describe you and
the quadroon. "
Then she added, " Corrèze will come here
this evening; he will come to sing for me; you
must not offer him anything, not even a ring, or
you will insult him."
"Pshaw!" said Zouroff, roughly. "Whydo
you not get others to sing for you whom you
can pay properly like artists? There are many."
"Many singers like Corrèze? I am afraid
not. But I induced him to come, not only for
his singing, but because when he has saved
your wife's life it is as well you should look
thankful, even if you do not feel so."
' You grow as romantic as she is, in your
old age, Nadine," said Zouroff, with a shrug of
his shoulders.
" In old age, perhaps, one appreciates many
things that one overlooks in one's youth," said
the princess, unruffled, and with a little sigh.
"Twenty years ago I should not have appre-
ciated your wife, perhaps, much more than you
do."
" Do you find her amusing?" he said, with a
little laugh and a yawn.
Later in that day Vere drove out alone. Ma
dame Nelaguine was otherwise occupied, and
her mother was away spending a day or two
with a friend who had a villa at La Condamine.
She had never once driven down the Promenade
des Anglais since she had been on the Riviera
this year, but this day her coachman took his
way along that famous road because the house
to which she was going, a house taken by Vlada-
mir Zouroff, and at which his wife, a pretty
Galician woman, lay ill, could not so quickly or
so easily be reached any other way. She drove
alone, her only companion Loris stretched on
the opposite cushions, beside a basket of violets
and white lilacs wliich she was taking to Sophie
Zouroff. The afternoon was brilliant; the
snow-white palaces, the green gardens, and the
azure sea sparkled in the sunlight; the black
Orloffs flew over the ground, tossing their silver
head-pieces and flashing their fiery eyes; people
looked after them and told one another, ' ' That
is the Princess Vera: look, that is the great
Russian's wife."
Vere, leaning back with Loris at her feet, had
a white covering of polar bear-skins cast over
her; she had on her the black sables which had
been in her marriage corbeille; the black and
white in their strong contrast enhanced and
heightened the beauty of her face and the fair-
ness of her hair; in her hand she held on her
,lap a great cluster of lilies of the valley.
Jr " That beautiful pale woman is Prince Zour-
off's wife: he must have strange taste to leave
her," said one man to another, as she passed.
There were many carriages out that day, as
usual before sunset: the black Russian horses
dashed through the crowd at their usual head-
long gallop, tossing their undocked manes and
tails in restless pride. Close against them passed
two bays at full trot; the bays were in a victoria;
in the victoria was a woman, swarthy and lus-
trous-eyed, who wore a Russian kaftan and had
black Russian sables thrown about her shoul-
ders; she was smoking; she blew some smoke
in the air and grinned from ear to ear as she
went past the Zouroff carriage; in her own car-
riage, lying back in it, was Sergius Zouroff.
A slight flush, that went over Vere's face to
her temples and then faded to leave her white as
new-fallen snow, was the only sign she gave
that she had recognized her husband with the
quadroon who was called Casse-une-Croûte.
Another moment, and the black Orloffs, flying
onward in a cloud of dust and flood of sunlight,
had left the bays behind them. Vere bent her
face over the lilies of the valley.
Half a mile farther she checked their flight,
and told the coachman t» return home by
another road instead of going onward to Sophie
Zouroff's.
When she reached the villa it was twilight,—
the short twilight of a winter day on the Med-
iterranean. She went up to her bed-chamber,
took off her sables, and with her own hands
wrapped them altogether, rang for her maid,
and gave the furs to her.
"When the prince comes* in, take these to
him," she said, in a calm voice. " and tell him
I have no farther use for them: he may have
some."
The woman, who was faithful to her and
knew much of the patience with which she
bore her life, looked grave as she took them ;
she guessed what had happened.
It was six o'clock.
The Princess Nadine came for a cup of yel-
low tea in Vere's dressing-room. She found
her gentle and serious as usual; as usual a good
listener to the babble of pleasant cynicisms and
philosophic commentaries with which Madame
Nelaguine always was ready to garnish and en-
liven the news of the hour.
Madame Nelaguine did not notice anything
amiss.
An hour later, when Zouroff came home to
dress for dinner, the waiting-woman, who loved
her mistress and was very loyal to her, took
him the sables and the message.
He stared, but said nothing. He understood.
The Prince of Monaco and other princes
dined at the Zouroff villa that evening. There
was a dinner-party of forty people in all. He
did not see his wife until the dinner hour.
Vere was pale with the extreme pallor that had
come on her face at sight of the quadroon;
she wore white velvet, and had a knot of white
lilac at her breast, and her only ornaments were
some great pearls given her by the Herberts ou
her marriage.
He stooped towards her a moment, under
pretext of raising a handkerchief she h.i
dropped.
" Madame," he said, in a harsh whisper, " I
do not like coups de théâtre, and with my actions
you have nothing to do.    You will wear your
sables and drive on the Promenade des Anglais
to-morrow.    Do yon hear?" he added, as she
remained silent.    Then she looked at him.
" I hear; but I shall not do it."
" You will not do it?"
"No."
Their guests entered. Vere received them
with her usual cold and harmonious grace.
"Really she is a grand creature," thought
Zouroff, with unwilling respect, " but I will
break her will: I never thought she had any
until this year; now she is stubborn as a mule."
The long dinner went on its course, and was
followed by an animated evening. Madame
Nelaguine had always made the Zouroff enter-
tainments more brilliant than most, from their
surprises, their vivacity, and their entrain, and
this was no exception to the rest.
That Prince Zouroff himself was gloomy
made no cause for remark; he never put any
curb on his temper either for society or in pri-
vate life, and the world was used to his fits of
moroseness. ' ' The Tsar sulks, " his sister would
always say, with a laugh, of him, and so cov-
ered his ill humor with" a jest. This night she
did not jest: her fine instincts told her that there
was a storm in the air.
About eleven o'clock every one was in the
white drawing-room, called so because it was
hung with white silk and had white china mir-
rors and chandeliers. Two clever musicians,
violinist and pianist, had executed some pieces
of Liszt and Schumann; they were gone, and
two actors from the Folies Dramatiques had
glided in as Louis Treize personages, played a •'
witty little revue, written for the society of the
hour, and had in turn vanished. Throughout
the long white room—in which the only color
allowed came from banks and pyramids of rose
hued azaleas—there was on every side arising
that animated babel of polite tongues which tells
a hostess that her people are well amused with
her and with themselves, and that the specter
of ennui is scornfully exorcised.
Suddenly the doors opened, and the servants
announced Corrèze.
" Quel bonheur !" cried Madame Nelaguine,
and muttered to her brother, " Say something
cordial and graceful, Sergius; you can when
you like."
Corrèze was bending low before the mistress
of the house; for the first time he saw the moth
and the star at her throat.
"Present me to M. de Corrèze, Vera," said
her husband, and she did so.
" I owe y ou much, and I am happy to be able
in my own house to beg you to believe in my
gratitude, and to command it when you will,"
said Zouroff, with courtesy and the admirable-
manner which he could assume with suavity..
aud dignity when he chose.
"1 was more weatherwise than a fisherman,
monsieur; that is all the credit I can claim,"'
said Corrèze, lightly and coldly. Every one
had ceased their conversation, men had lost
their interest in women's eyes, the very princes
present grew eager, and were thrown into the
shade. Corrèze had come,—Corrèze, with the
light on his poetic face, his grace of attitude,
his sweet, far-reaching voice, his past of con-
quest, his present of victory, his halo of fame,
his sorcery of indifference.
Corrèze stood by the side of his hostess, and
there was a gleam of challenge in his eyes,
usually so dreamy, this night so luminous; he
was as pale as she.
" I came to sing some songs to mesdames
your sister and your wife," said Corrèze, a little
abruptly to Zouroff. "Is that your piano?
You will permit me?"
He moved to it quickly.
" He knows why he is asked to come,"'
thought Zouroff, "but he speaks oddly: one
would think he were the prince and" I the
artist !"
"He is a rarer sort of prince than you,''
murmured Madame Nelaguine, who guessed his,
thoughts. "Do not touch him rudely, or the
nightingale will take wing."
Corrèze struck one loud chord on the notes,
and through the long white room there came a
perfect silence.
Not thrice in twelve months was he ever
heard out of his own opera-houses.
He paused with his hands on the keys; he
looked down the drawing-room; all he saw of all
that was around hira were a sea of light, a
bloom of rose-red flowers, a woman's figure in
white velvet, holding a white fan of ostrich-
feathers in her hand, and with a knot of white-
lilac at her breast. He closed his eyelids rap-
idly one instant, as a man does who is dazzled
by flame or blinded with a mist of tears ; then
he looked steadily down the white room and
sang a Noel of Félicien David's.
Never in all his nights of triumph had he sungy
more superbly. He was still young, and his
voice was in its perfection. He could do
what he chose with it, and he chose to-night to
hold that little crowd of tired great people
hanging on his lips as though they were sheep
that hearkened to Orpheus.
He chose to show her husband and her world
what spell he could use, what power he could
wield,—a charm that their richness could not
purchase, a sorcery their rank could not com
mand. He was in the mood to sing, and he
sang as generously as in his childhood he had
warbled his wood-notes wild to the winds of
the mountains; as superbly and with as exqui-
site a mastery and science as he had ever sung
with to the crowded theaters of the great na-
tions of the world.
The careless and fashionable crowd listened,
and was electrified into emotion. It could not
resist; men were dumb, and women heard with
glistening eyes and aching hearts; Sergius.
Zouroff, for whom music rarely had any
charm, as he heard that grand voice rise on the
stillness, clear as a clarion that calls to war, and
then sink and fall to a sweetness of scarcely
mortal sound, owned its influence, and, as he
sat with his head downward and his heavy eye-
lids closed, felt dully and vaguely that he was
vile, and Deity perchance not all a fable, and
shuddered a little, and felt his soul shrink
before the singer's as Saul's in its madness be-
fore David.
When Corrèze paused, all was silent. To
give him compliment or gratitude would have