“Then you are half a Russian?” smiled Wilfrid.
Though by her own showing this must be so, the Baroness nevertheless seemed to resent the idea.
“No, indeed, I am wholly French, as I can soon prove. Vera, come here a moment,” she said, addressing her maid.
The girl came forward, and at her mistress’s request knelt upon the hearth.
“Vera is a pure Muscovite,” said the Baroness. “Now, look at her ear,” she continued, touching it caressingly. “You see it? Look at mine, and tell me the difference.”
“Her ear has no lobe,” remarked Wilfrid, in some surprise.
“True. Have you not noticed the like before?” asked Pauline. “No? O, unobservant man! Well, after this take due note, and you will find that every true-born Russ is without a lobe to his ear.”
Wilfrid wondered whether his grand duchess was distinguished by this peculiarity. He hoped not, for Pauline’s pearly little shell of an ear was prettier than Vera’s.
“I suppose,” he observed, “that all the members of the Imperial Family bear this Muscovite mark?”