"Good-morning," said Zinka hastily, "I am in a great hurry--I am going to the Hotel de l'Europe; Gabrielle Truyn is very ill--she wants to see me."
But at this moment Zinka perceived a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a very handsome face and haughty expression, standing close to Nini. He was gazing at her with perfectly well-bred admiration, and Nini introduced him as Prince Sempaly. Then she saw that Nicklas Sempaly was just behind, with Polyxena. His eyes met hers with a passionate flash, but he only bowed with distant formality. Zinka had no time to think about his manner, she was hardly conscious of his presence--all she felt was that she was being detained.
"You must excuse me," she said, smiling an apology to Nini and shaking hands warmly with her without stopping to think of the formalities of caste. "Poor Count Truyn is expecting me." And she hurried on again.
"Who is that sweet-looking girl, Nini?" asked the prince, "for, of course, you omitted to mention her name."
"Fräulein Sterzl," replied Nini, "the sister of one of the secretaries to the embassy."
"Sterzl," repeated the prince somewhat flatly.
"Zenaïde Sterzl!" said Polyxena over her shoulder.
But the ironical accent emphasis she laid on the odd mixture of the romantic and the commonplace was thrown away upon Prince Sempaly, who was much too fine a gentleman to laugh at his inferiors; all he said was:
"Sterzl? I seem to know the name. Sterzl--I served for a time under a Colonel Sterzl of the Uhlans. He was a very superior man."
Zinka meanwhile was flying on to the Hotel de l'Europe. In the sun-flooded court-yard stood two rose-trees, a white and a red--two brown curly-headed little boys were fighting a duel with walking-sticks in a shady corner--two English families were packing themselves into roomy landaus for an excursion and sending the servants in and out to fetch things that they had forgotten. The air was full of the scent of roses, and sunshine, and laughter; but one of the Englishwomen hushed her companion who had laughed rather loudly and pointing up to one of the windows said: "Remember the sick child."