He was set down for a clinical lecture at noon. At eleven he started in his brougham and drove to one of the new roads in South Kensington where the Prince Andriocchi rented a furnished house for the season.
An English groom of the chambers came forward as the door opened.
The princess was at home.
Hugh followed the man, who wore a dress something akin to ordinary levée costume, up the wide staircase, through the large, silent drawing-rooms which were furnished in the Parisian style rather than according to British taste, into a boudoir where he left him.
It was a circular room lighted from above. The ceiling was a dome draped in a peculiar fashion with some soft white stuff in cloud-like puffings; the narrow windows were of pink glass. The carpet was rose-pink with a white flower pattern, the walls were lined with puffings of white and pale pink satin, while the furniture was of pink and white brocade and gilded wood. A few engravings of celebrated pictures stood about on easels; and everywhere, wherever he looked, Hugh saw the choicest flowers; cut flowers in bowls, plants in jardinières. It was a room which was unlike all other rooms he remembered, yet, as he looked around, it struck him that he had seen some room like it somewhere, once. When? How? In a dream?
The sound of a door opening behind him made him turn round, and he saw the princess coming towards him through a conservatory which lay beyond a curtained arch opposite the door by which he had entered.
She was dressed in some floating girlish dress of softly tinted stuffs: she seemed lost in thought—Hugh fancied she was unaware that he was there: she walked slowly and wearily, her eyes cast down—then paused to pick off a dying blossom as she passed between the banks of bloom.
But—she knew! For as she came in she raised her eyes, and the colour rising to her pale cheek she said:
“Ah, I knew you would come!”
It was a strange thing to say; but it was said simply, earnestly, without the slightest tinge of vanity. As for coquetry, no man, looking at that sad, beautiful young face, would have been so lost to all sense of chivalry as to dream of the detestable quality in the presence of this gentle, modest woman.