"Ah, yes," Thérèse says, triumphantly. "You must know, ladies, that my husband's patriotism is not so ardent as would seem, but rather of a platonic character; he loves his country at a distance. When, five years ago, after we had been here some time, he gave up his career and wanted to go back to Vienna, I made no objections whatever, and we established ourselves in his beloved native city, at first only provisionally. At the end of six months he was so frightfully bored that he actually longed for Paris."
Edmund dips his fingers in his finger-glass with a slightly embarrassed air.
"That is true," he admits. "Paris is the Manon Lescaut of European capitals: worthless thing that she is, we can never be rid of her if she has once bewitched us."
And as Thérèse prepares to rise from table he asks, "Do you object to a cigarette, ladies, and are you fond of children? Then, Thérèse, let us take coffee in the smoking-room, where I am sure the children are waiting for me."
CHAPTER XXIII.
[PRINCE ZINO CAPITO.]
The smoking-room is a somewhat narrow apartment, with a large Oriental rug before the broad double windows, with very beautiful old weapons in a couple of stands against the wall, and with heavy antique carved oaken chests. The broad low arm-chairs and divans are covered with Oriental rugs and carpets which Rohritz, as he informs Stella, brought from Cairo himself.
The two children, a little boy twelve years old, with tight red stockings and very short breeches, and a little girl hardly three, in a white gown, with bare legs and arms, help their mamma to serve the coffee. Momond takes the ladies their cups, and Baby is steady enough on her legs to trip after him with a face of great solemnity, carrying the silver sugar-bowl tightly hugged up in her arms. After she has happily completed her round she puts the sugar-bowl down before her mother, with a sigh of relief as over a difficult duty fulfilled, and smooths down her short, stiff skirts with a very decorous air. But when her father, from the other side of the room, where he is talking with Stella, smiles at her, she runs to him with a glad cry, forgetting all decorum springs into his lap, and is petted and caressed by him to his heart's content.
"Do you know whom that picture represents, Baroness Stella?" the host now asks, pointing to a life-size photograph hanging beneath the portrait in oil of a beautiful, fair woman. Although Stella had noticed the photograph as soon as she entered the smoking-room, she pretends to have her attention attracted by it for the first time.
"Yes, the likeness can still be recognized," she replies, bestowing a critical glance upon the picture, "although if it ever looked really like Baron Edgar Rohritz he must have altered very much."