"Charlotte!" was all she could stammer out, "Char--lotte ... you ... here!"
"Quite a surprise, is it not, Clotilde? Yes, the most unhoped-for things sometimes happen. We arrived to-day at three o'clock and called here this afternoon but you were out; so then we decided to try in the evening. It is rather late, to be sure, and I, for my part, should have been here long ago, but Slawa insisted on dressing--for such near relations! Quite absurd ... but I do not like to contradict her, she is so easily put out--so I waited to dress too."
And the baroness, after embracing her sister and her niece, plumped down uninvited on a very low chair.
She had dressed with a vengeance: a black lace cap was perched on the top of her short, grey hair, with lappets that hung down over her ears. Her massive person was squeezed into a violet satin gown, which she had evidently out-grown, and a lace scarf picturesquely thrown over her shoulders was intended to conceal its defects; her lavender-colored gloves were very short and much too tight, and burst at all the button-holes. Slawa had a general effect of tricolor, and she wore some old jewelry that she had bought of a dealer in antiquities at Verona. She had curled and piled up her hair after the antique and kept her head constantly turned over her left shoulder, to be as much like the Apollo as possible, at the same time making a grimace as if she were being photographed and wished to look bewitching.
Vladimir Matuschowsky's tall, slouching figure was buttoned into a braided coat; he held a low-crowned hat with tassels in his hand, and glared at the plain dress-coats of the other two men as though they were a personal insult.
"Monsieur Vladimir de Matuschowsky," said the baroness introducing him, "a ... a ... friend of the family." But she said it in French: when the Baroness Wolnitzka was at all at a loss she commonly spoke French.
Her sister, who by this time had got over her astonishment, now began to wish to dazzle the new-comers.
"Count Sempaly," she said, presenting the attaché; "a friend of our family ... my sister, the Baroness Wolnitzka. You have no doubt heard of the famous Slav leader Baron Wolnitzky, who was so conspicuous a figure in forty-eight."
Sempaly bowed without speaking; Baroness Wolnitzka rose and politely offered him her hand: "I am delighted to make your acquaintance," she said. "I have heard a great deal about you; my sister has mentioned you in all her letters and I am quite au courant."
Again Sempaly bowed in silence and then, retiring into the background while the mistress of the house turned to address Slawa, he said to Sterzl: