"Excuse me if I am indiscreet; I had no idea----" the Pole begins.
"Oh, you are one of the family, quite one of the family," Selina assures him, with an amiable smile. "I might have thought the question embarrassing from any one else, but I can speak to you without reserve of these matters. You are perhaps aware that a sister of my father's,--is only sister,--when quite an old maid,--I believe she was thirty-seven,--ran off with an actor, a very obscure comedian; I think he played the elderly knights at the Rudolfsheim Theatre, and as the bandit Jaromir he turned her head. She displayed the courage de ses opinions, and married him. He treated her brutally, and she died, after fifteen years of wretched married life. On her death-bed she sent for my father, and bequeathed her daughter to his care. This was Olga. My father--I cannot tell how it happened--took the most immense fancy to the girl. He tried to persuade mamma to take her home immediately. Fancy! a creature brought up amid such surroundings, behind the foot-lights. True, my aunt was separated from her bandit Jaromir for several years before her death; but under such strange circumstances mamma really could not take the little gypsy into the house with her own half-grown daughters. So she was sent to a convent, and we all hoped she would become a nun. But no; and when her education was finished, shortly before papa's death, mamma took her home. I was married at the time, and I remember her arrival vividly. You can imagine how terrible it was for us to admit so strange an element among us. But, although he seldom interfered in domestic affairs, it was impossible to dispute papa's commands."
"H'm, h'm!" And the Pole's slender white fingers drum upon the top of the table. "Je comprends. It is a great charge for your mother, and c'est bien dur." Although he speaks French stumblingly, he continually expresses himself in that tongue, as if it is the only one in which he can give utterance to the inmost feelings of his soul.
"Ah, mamma has always sacrificed everything to duty!" sighs Selina; "and somebody had to take pity upon the poor creature."
"Nobly said, and nobly thought, Countess Selina; but then, after all,--an actor's daughter,--you really do not know all that it means. Does she show no signs of her unfortunate parentage?"
"No," says Selina, thoughtfully; "her manners are very good, the spell of the Sacré Cœur Convent is still upon her. She is not particularly well developed intellectually, but, since you call my attention to it, she does show some signs of the overstrained enthusiasm which characterized her mother."
"And in combination with her father's gypsy blood. Such signs are greatly to be deplored," the Pole observes. "You must long to have her married?"
"A difficult matter to bring about. Remember her origin." The Countess inclines her head on one side, and takes a long stitch in her embroidery. "She must be the image of her father. The bandit Jaromir was a handsome man of Italian extraction."
"Is the fellow still alive?" asks the Pole.
"No, he is dead, thank heaven! it would be terrible if he were not," says Selina, with a laugh. "À propos," she adds, selecting and comparing two shades of yellow, "do you think Olga pretty?"