"I told you yesterday I should come, and I knew you were expecting me from your sending your servants away to the theatre."
"And you knew that too?"
"Yes, because they took mine along with them. So here we are all alone by ourselves."
The consciousness of being the only living creatures in a whole house has a delicious charm, fraught with mystery and awe, for two young women. Blanka took her guest's hat and shawl, and then proceeded to start a fire on the hearth. The fair Cyrene meanwhile caught up her mandolin and began to sing one of Alfred de Musset's songs, full of the warmth and glow of the sunny South. Presently the hostess invited her guest to take tea with her, and asked her at the same time her baptismal name.
The marchioness laughed. "Haven't you heard it often enough? They call me 'Cyrene.'"
"But that isn't your real name," objected Blanka. "You were not christened 'Cyrene.'"
"I use it for my name, however, and no one but my father confessor calls me by my real name, so that now I never hear it without thinking that I must fall on my knees and repeat a dozen paternosters in penance. Besides, my name doesn't suit me at all. It is Rozina, and I am as pale as moonshine. You might far better be called Rozina, for you have such beautiful rosy cheeks, and I should have been named Blanka. I'll tell you, suppose we exchange names: you call me Blanka, and I'll call you Rozina."
The suggestion seemed so funny to Blanka that she burst out laughing, and a woman who laughs is already more than half won over.
"Now, then," continued the other, "we can chat away to our heart's content. There's no one to listen to us or play the spy—a good thing for you to know, Rozina, because all your servants are hired spies. Your doorkeeper and his wife keep a regular journal of who comes in and who goes out, what visiting-cards are left, whom you receive, where you drive,—which they learn from your coachman,—whom you visit, and even with whom you exchange a passing word. Your maid reads all your letters and searches all your pockets. Even your gardener keeps an account of all the flowers you order; for flowers, you know, have a language of their own. Be sure you don't buy a parrot, else it will turn spy on you, too."
"Who can it be that is so suspicious of me?" asked the princess, in surprise.