Her sad, weary glance wanders absently over the various lithographs that adorn the walls, portraits of famous singers, Tamberlik, Rubini, Mario, all with the signature of those celebrities. Apparently the hotel must formerly have enjoyed an extensive artistic patronage.
She takes up Gibbon once more, and does her best to become absorbed in the destinies of the tribunes of the people. In vain.
"Good heavens!" she exclaims, irritably, "who could read a serious book in all this noise? And 'The Negroes' was recommended to us as a quiet hotel!"
The Deputy from the south of France is pacing the room above her to and fro, now repeating in a murmur and anon declaiming with grotesque pathos to the empty air the speech which he is learning by heart.
In the room next to him an amateur performer is piping 'The Last Rose of Summer' on a very hoarse flute,--an English bagman, who is suffering from an inflammation of the eyes, wherefore we must not grudge him his musical distractions. He is piping 'The Last Rose' for the eighteenth time; Stella has counted.
"'Tis beyond endurance!" the girl exclaims, closing her Gibbon. "Ah, heavens, how dreary life is!" she groans. "I wish I were dead!"
Just then there comes a ring at the door. Stella opens it. A tall, smooth-shaven lackey stands in the corridor and hands her a card:
"La Baronne Edmond de Rohritz, née Princesse Capito."
"Madame la Baronne wishes to know if the Frau Baroness is receiving?" the man asks, vanishing when Stella assents.
"He probably takes me for a waiting-maid," Stella thinks, childishly, not without some petty annoyance that she was forced to open the door herself for the servant, and she hurries into the salon, to put away a piece of mending which is by no means ornamental. Scarcely has she done so when a light foot-fall comes tripping up the stairs. There is another ring, and again Stella opens the door. A lady enters, slender, very pale, with delicately-cut features, and large, black, rather restless eyes, which she slightly closes as she looks at Stella, and then pleasantly holds out her hand: