A man will forgive a very beautiful woman everything, even the evil which he has heard of her, nay, he may find a mysterious charm in her transgressions, if she takes pains to win his favour with intelligence, prudence, and the necessary degree of reserve. This piece of wisdom Stella has gained from the French romances of which she has read extracts out of pure ennui as they appear daily in 'Figaro' and the 'Gaulois.'
That a man must find it difficult to shake off an old friend who approaches him with imploring humility, that he cannot well refuse when she requests him to bring her an ice, and that should she hand him her fan he cannot possibly lay it down on a table with a proudly forbidding air and then take his leave with a formal bow,--all this Stella never takes into consideration; and this is why she is so wretchedly unhappy as she seats herself beside Natalie Lipinski on a plush ottoman, near a table of flowers.
A young Russian, a friend of the Lipinskis, begs Natalie for a waltz, and she takes his arm and goes into the adjoining dancing-room. Stella is left alone, beside old Madame Lipinski, who is just getting ready to relate something extremely entertaining about the Emperor Nicholas, when Rohritz suddenly perceives Stella. With a smiling remark he hands the white feather fan to a gentleman standing beside him, and hastens towards the young girl, paying his respects, of course, first to the elder lady, and then to her. If he has reckoned upon her old-time child-like, confiding smile, he is disappointed. She answers him stiffly, and thanks him for his flowers without cordiality. "How pale she looks!" he says to himself. "What can be the matter with her? Can she have cried her eyes out because she must dance the cotillon to-night with me instead of with Zino Capito?"
"'Tis very hard that poor Capito should be disabled just at this time," he remarks.
"Yes, because the burden of dancing the cotillon with me devolves upon you," Stella replies, betraying, for the first time since he has known her, a degree of sensitiveness that is almost ridiculous. "I am, of course, perfectly ready to release you from the obligation."
"That would be a readiness to rob me of a pleasure to which I had looked forward eagerly," he replies, gravely.
"You had looked forward to it?--really?" Stella asks, with genuine surprise in her eyes. "Really?" And she looks down with a shake of the head at her poor white dress, at her entire toilette, in which nothing is absolutely modern save the long gloves that reach to her shoulders.
It is rather remarkable that these gloves are the only thing about her with which Edgar Rohritz finds fault.
"What charming dimples that Swedish kid must hide!" he says to himself. A seat beside Stella hitherto occupied by an Englishwoman with very sharp red elbows is vacated. Edgar takes possession of it.
"Yes, I had looked forward to it," he says, "although I do not dance, and you will consequently be obliged to talk with me through the cotillon."