"With the Oblonsky? Not with the former von Föhren?" husband and wife exclaim simultaneously.
"Certainly!"
"What a joke!--with the Oblonsky!"
Thérèse almost chokes with laughter.
It is ten o'clock. The children have long since disappeared with their bonne; the servant has brought in the tea-equipage. There is a pause in the conversation, such as is apt to ensue when people have laughed until they are tired. The Baron puts a fresh log on the fire and rakes the embers together. The blaze flames and crackles; little hovering lights and shadows dance over the old golden-brown leather tapestries. Suddenly the door opens, and unannounced, with the sans gêne of close relationship, a young man enters the room, tall, slender, with a certain attractive audacity expressed in the lines about his mouth and in his eyes which puts beyond question his resemblance to the Olympian dandy. It is the Apollo of modern drawing-room dimensions, the Apollo forty-four years old, already a little gray about the temples, with a wrinkle or two at the corners of his eyes, in a coat of Poole's, a gardenia in his button-hole, his crush hat under his arm,--Prince Zino Capito!
"Pray present me," he says, after he has greeted his sister, and Stella also, turning towards the Baroness.
"And you already know my new star?" Thérèse exclaims, in surprise, after she has fulfilled his request.
The Prince looks full at Stella, with a look peculiar to himself, a look in which admiration reaches the boundary of impertinence without crossing it,--then says, smiling,--
"Çà, Sasa!" when he is in a good humour he calls his sister thus, by the name which he gave her when he was a lisping baby in the nursery,--"ça, Sasa, do you really suppose that I would have rushed back from Lyons simply on the strength of the enthusiastic description of your latest trouvaille that you sent me in your note of invitation? No, my little sister, I am too well aware of your liability to acute attacks of enthusiasm not to receive your brilliant perorations with a justifiable mistrust. I once had the pleasure of seeing Mademoiselle very often, for a while," he continues, speaking French.
"Where?--when?" asks Thérèse.