“Have you noticed,” asked Alexandra of Zrinyi, as the Archduchess descended the staircase, “that our princess has, until to-night, for the past week worn only black or white?”
“Why should I notice a trifling detail like that?” asked Zrinyi sulkily. “If she look beautiful, what matters her dress?”
“You don’t deserve to be asked intelligent questions.”
Ranata was trailing down the rough old staircase, between smoking lamps almost as old, in a green velvet gown of many hues, any one of which would have enhanced the brilliancy of her skin and hair. The neck of the gown was cut squarely, and a high stiff collar of white lace rose behind her head. Her skin was bare of jewels, her hair piled high and without ornament. In her cheeks was a deep flush, her eyes sparkled restlessly, her face had escaped from its habitual repose. Her whole figure expressed vigor, energy, impatience ill-confined.
“If it were not the Princess, one would almost say she looked reckless,” murmured Piroska to Fessenden, who was staring at the vision—the only one of the company, perhaps, who found nothing foreign in Ranata’s appearance. Piroska compelled him to transfer his gaze. “That is the way I have always imagined a girl might look who had made up her mind to elope,” she continued.
Fessenden started slightly, and quick as he was with his words, the Countess noticed it. “The Princess has the cruelty of your sex,” he replied. “She doubtless occupies a very considerable part of her time thinking out new gowns with which to distract us.”
“Why don’t you look more hopeless?” whispered Piroska.
“Must you have men who wear their hearts upon their sleeves?”
“No; but no man can wear a mask forever, unless he is secretly happier than he would have us believe.”
“I am always happy; it is a mere matter of temperament.” He paused deliberately and looked at her. “Moreover,” he added, “I have no intention of failing.” And then he joined the group about the Archduchess. They had parted but two hours before, and although he had never been so convinced of her love for him, there had been nothing then of the almost reckless promise which her eyes seemed to flash to his as the movement was made towards the lower end of the room. What did it mean? Had an hour of solitary thought in the dark, before her maids came to dress her, beaten her passion so high that it had overwhelmed her traditions at last, and urged her to take advantage of this opportunity for flight? He turned giddy at the thought and suddenly realized that deeply enamoured as he was with the idea of manipulating princes, his want of the woman extinguished this ambition among others, and that he found incomplete happiness something more than torment.