"In Monaco?" cried Hildegard.
"Alas, my good mamma, the Countess Lassounska, you must know, was a great votary of the green cloth. Well, she could afford to indulge a passion which, among the ladies of the Russian aristocracy, not seldom survives or reappears, when they have had to bury all other passions. And in all others poor mamma had been so very unfortunate; but in this she was singularly lucky. Thus, one night--it was in autumn '72--she died next spring, four weeks after my marriage with the Prince, who had at that time followed us to Monaco, and to whom I had just, being then sixteen years of age, become engaged--good Lord, and he has been dead these two years! How time passes! But what was I going to say? Oh yes; mamma had won an immense sum one night, so much that at last she was barely paying any attention to what she was staking, and when she noticed a friend, she turned round to talk to him, without leaving her chair, until the gentleman himself called her attention to the accumulating gains, and asked if she would not withdraw them. But she said there was no hurry, and went on chattering, to the amazement of her neighbours and the terror of the bank, for they kept and kept losing on the red. At last mamma did turn round again to the table, her own curiosity roused by the divers exclamations of the bystanders; but just at that moment a gentleman, who had been sitting by her side all night, was pocketing the whole huge heap of banknotes and rouleaux of gold. Mamma claimed her property, of course; the gentleman assured her she was mistaken. Mamma knew that this was not the case, but a scene in a gambling-room, don't you know, dear, c'est une horreur for a lady with aristocratic nerves like poor mamma, the friend she had been conversing with wanted to interfere, so did a number of the bystanders, and play had to be suspended. Mamma said that if the gentleman asserted that the money was his, she would waive her claim; rose, took her friend's arm, and left the room. Here the matter ended, and nothing further followed, for the 'gentleman' elected to leave that very night for Nice. There, they say, he speedily got rid of his illgotten gains. At least, when we arrived there four weeks later, they pointed out a gentleman in the play saloon to us who had recently lost fabulous sums. On that occasion I saw him for the first time--I was not generally allowed to enter the gambling-rooms--and for the last time, for he had no sooner caught sight of our party, than he rose from the table and vanished from the room, and I think from Nice; anyhow, he never, appeared again during the rest of our sojourn. Mamma had given strict orders not to take any notice; whatever of the adventurer."
"And this--adventurer, had a distant likeness to the Baron?"
"A distant likeness? No, dear, a most distinct one. That's the misfortune!"
Alexandra was leaning back again in the arm-chair and toying with her rings. Hildegard was staring gloomily in front of her. The execution of her long-cherished, plan, the fulfilment of her eager desire, was now threatened by an obstacle which seemed much worse than any previous one; and she was already almost reduced to despair by the others that she had to struggle against.
"A misfortune, indeed!" she said; "a great misfortune for our friend, who, will now have to suffer so bitterly for an accident he is guiltless of."
"How suffer, dear?"
"Were you not saying yourself a short while ago that this wretched likeness was making it impossible for you to arrive at an unprejudiced opinion about the Baron? Well, it matters everything to him, of course, that your opinion should not only not be prejudiced but favourable. And--to confess the truth--to me, to us, it matters much, very much."
Alexandra drew herself up, the old odd smile was hovering about her lips again.
"Does it really matter so much to you?" she said. "Do I understand you correctly?"