"We will finish the figure, Monseigneur," she said graciously; "then, perhaps, you will excuse me."
"Nothing has happened to the Prince, believe me," said the young man kindly, as they moved down the room. "He has doubtless gone on some private expedition with his servant. He probably forgot to leave a message, and will return to-morrow."
The Princess was so reassured, apparently, by these reflections that she remained for the final figure of the dance. Then she left the palace, and, declining the Count's company, drove to her Hôtel alone.
She was more strangely moved than she could have explained to herself. She was, indeed, frightened and perplexed by her own feelings. She felt herself influenced by an hitherto unrecognised power, and, as it were, driven onwards by an overpowering impulse, not her own.
Returning, as she did, at an unexpected hour, her women were not in waiting for her, and, leaving the servants who had accompanied her from the palace in the hall of the Hôtel, she wandered up the great staircase alone. The corridors and rooms were dimly lighted, and a perfect stillness reigned through the house.
The Princess ascended slowly towards her own apartment, where she expected to find some, at least, of her dressers, and in so doing, in a dimly-lighted corridor, she passed the rooms allotted to her children. The thought of them was not, indeed, in her mind when, as she passed a door, she fancied that she heard a suppressed, continued crying, as of children in distress. Still more moved and troubled by this faint pathetic sound she opened the door and went in. The room was an antechamber, and both it and the apartment beyond were dark. The Princess procured a small lamp from the corridor and entered the suite of rooms.
In the bedchamber beyond the antechamber she found the children, both sitting up in one bed, clasped in each other's arms, and crying quietly. The little boy had evidently come for shelter and comfort to his sister's bed.
"What is the matter, children?" said the Princess, in a tone which seemed to the little ones strangely soft and kind. "Why are you not asleep?"
The children had ceased crying, and were looking at her wonderingly as she stood in her jewels and ball-dress, a brilliant scarf of Indian work hanging from her arm, the lamp in her hand. They hardly knew whether it was their mother, whom they saw so seldom, or some serene ethereal visitant, who resembled her in face and form.
The little Princess, however, with the self-possession of her class, apparently left this point undecided, and began in her quiet, stately little way to explain.