CHAPTER XIII.
We have been four months at Paris without anything to disturb the happy life which we have led, secure from all suspicions. Nothing can be more original or sweeter than this love concealed from all prying eyes, the exquisite pleasures of which you can imagine. Kondjé, delighted with her triumphs, plays everywhere her part of enchantress.
My romance is, however, complicated by a circumstance which I must at once relate to you.
You will not have forgotten that my aunt had seen Kondjé-Gul at Baroness de Villeneuve's party, and that she conceived a great liking for her. Their friendship having been cemented during several parties at the commodore's, where they met each other, my aunt very naturally invited Madame Murrah and her daughter to dinner one evening. She is fond of young people, as you know; and Suzannah, Maud, and Kondjé-Gul formed such a charming trio, that she soon insisted on their coming to dine with her every Thursday. Indeed, Kondjé has frequently met Anna Campbell there, for the latter has leave out from her convent twice a month. The consequence was, we became in time so completely involved in intimate relations together, that it would have been imprudent to make any break in them: moreover, Kondjé-Gul was so very happy and so proud of this intimacy which allied her still more closely with me! All of them were charmed with her; even my uncle, who, delighted at the opportunity of conversing with her in Turkish, treated her with quite a display of gallantry.
Among the constant visitors at our house, I should have mentioned Count Daniel Kiusko, a fabulously rich young Slav, the owner of platinum mines in the Krapacks mountains, and in the forests of Bessarabia. This being his first visit to Paris, I found myself selected to act as his guide or bear-leader, and to introduce him to our gay world. It was a simple enough task, for that matter, since I had hardly anything to do but to present him in society.
He was tall, slenderly built, and a fine specimen of the young boyard, with that determined expression of countenance which suggests a habit of acting and being obeyed as the feudal lord. In less than a week, with the most lofty recklessness, he had thrown away half a million francs in the club at baccarat, and his other doings are all in the same vein. With such a start, you may be sure he has taken the world by storm, so that his friendship is sought after as a prize. A successful duel which he fought with a Brazilian made his reputation as a skilful swordsman.
His gratitude to me, and a sort of frank admiration of superior qualities, which he fancies he recognises in me, have won for me his friendship. I have quite become "his guide, philosopher, and friend." I find him a capital companion, and, like some modern Damon and Pythias, we hardly pass a day without seeing one another. At first he was rather surprised that I abstained from the promiscuous pleasures of the gay world; but he soon divined that I was restrained by the spell of a secret passion, and this placed me still higher in his estimation.