"We'll send for him now."
"Yes."
Cornélie rang the bell. A footman appeared.
"Tell his excellency that we are ready."
The man went away. In a little while the prince entered. He had never been treated like this in his own house. He was seething with rage, but he remained very polite and outwardly calm:
"Is the important matter settled?" he asked, with his small eyes and his hypocritical smile.
"Yes; thank you very much for your discretion in leaving us to ourselves," said Cornélie. "Now that I have spoken to Miss Hope, I am greatly relieved by what she has told me. Aha, you would like to know what we were talking about!"
The prince raised his eyebrows. Cornélie had spoken archly, holding up her finger as though in threat, smiling; and the prince looked at her and saw that she was handsome. Not with the striking beauty and freshness of Urania Hope, but with a more complex attractiveness, that of a married woman, divorced, but very young; that of a fin-de-siècle woman, with a faintly perverse expression in her deep grey eyes, moving under very long lashes; that of a woman of peculiar grace in the drooping lines of her tired, lax, morbid charm: a woman who knew life; a woman who saw through him: he was certain of it; a woman who, though disliking him, nevertheless spoke to him coquettishly in order to attract him, to win him, unconsciously, from sheer womanly perversity. And he saw her, in her perverse beauty, and admired her, sensitive as he was to various types of women. He suddenly thought her handsomer and less commonplace than Urania and much more distinguished and not so ingenuously susceptible to his title, a thing which he thought so silly in Urania. He was suddenly at his ease with her, his anger subsided: he thought it fun to have two good-looking women with him instead of one; and he jested in return, saying that he was consumed with curiosity, that he had been listening at the door, but had been unable to catch a word, alas!
Cornélie laughed with coquettish gaiety and looked at her watch. She said something about going, but sat down at the same time, unbuttoned her coat and said to the prince:
"I have heard so much about your miniatures. Now that I have the chance, may I see them?"