Nadeska had just lighted the last candle when the maid on duty slipped into the room and whispered something into her ear, for no message was brought directly to the princess.
"What is it, Nadeska?" asked the latter.
"The count wishes to see you," replied her confidante.
The princess trembled.
"What can he want?" she said. "He ought to be at the railway station."
"He probably mistook the hour."
"Maybe! Let him come; but stay in the room."
Upon a nod from Nadeska the maid went out, after waiting humbly at the door. Immediately a gentleman entered rapidly.
He was a tall, slender man, dressed with exquisite taste, who looked at the first glance as if he might be twenty-five, and grew older and older the longer one looked at him, until at last one was disposed to think him sixty years old. This required, however, a very careful examination, as his mask was finished down to the minutest details. His black hair and brows, his curly beard, his snow-white teeth, his broad shoulders and full hips, were triumphs of art; and if his valet had been able to give a little lustre to his eyes, to calm the paralytic trembling of his hands, and to remove the bad, tiny wrinkles which lay like diminutive snakes around his eyes. Count Ladislaus Malikowsky might still have been a dangerous man for women, at least for a certain class. He had been irresistible when a young man; but now nothing was left him of his youth but an insatiate desire for enjoyment, and a reckless profligacy, which went hand in hand with the cool, calculating prudence of old age.
This disgusting caricature of youth approached the princess, kissed her hand courteously, and said, while sinking carefully into one of the arm-chairs before the fire: