"Leave Pampeln," cried Vera, not able to command herself, "leave us? Where will he go to?"
"I don't know, but very far away, so he has told me. What is the matter with you?"
The unhappy girl had grown ghastly pale. She could scarcely stand.
"Nothing, nothing," she said, making a great effort not to betray herself further. "It is the fatigue of the journey, no doubt. Let me go to bed now, father. I shall see you to-morrow, shall I not?"
"Yes, dear Vera, to-morrow. I have promised the prince to come and take his instructions to-morrow. I shall go back to Elva now. Do you have a good night's rest, and you will be as strong and brave when you wake as if you had not traveled four hundred leagues."
And Soublaieff, having kissed his daughter tenderly, retired.
Night was falling. The great portraits of the ancestors of the Olsdorfs that hung on the walls of the room; the suits of armor which stood as if they covered still the men who had worn them of old; the fantastic shadows which the last rays of daylight lengthened, streaming through the colored glass of the Gothic window-frames; the mournful silence that reigned around her, all filled Vera with so sudden a fear that she fled in terror to the rooms which Yvan had told her were to be hers.
They were in the right wing of the château, near to those that Pierre's son and his governess, Mme. Bernard, a worthy woman quite wrapped up in the child intrusted to her care, occupied. It was the suite which was usually reserved for the prince's more intimate friends. Very elegantly furnished, it consisted of a dressing-room, a bath-room, and a small sitting-room.
As soon as she got there, Vera burst into tears and sobs.
So all was over; the prince deserted her, careless of the love he had won, love which either he did not see or perhaps despised; he was going away, leaving her to her memories and her despair. She had been nothing but a tool in his hands, of which he rid himself pitilessly. Her dream was all a lie; he did not love her. What did she care for the comfort he wished to leave her in? Was not her future life quite ruined? Why, then, should she stay at Pampeln? No, she would not. With her father only could she hope for forgetfulness. She would keep none of the rich dresses and jewels that he had given her. They would but recall to her hours of bliss and hope which she would no longer have the right to remember. She would go back to Elva as she had come from it, poor and simple, not to-morrow but then, that night, without seeing the man who thought of her no more. She would walk the road from Pampeln to Elva, all alone, as she used to do when she was a little girl and knew only by sight, because they stopped at the farm on hunting days, elegant carriages such as she had been driven about Paris in. The darkness would not frighten her. What misfortune could happen to her greater than that she was now suffering? And the poor child, her eyes filled with tears, her hair falling about her shoulders, her hands trembling, turned over the things in her trunks to find, among the silks and laces, the linen gown and national head-dress which she had worn three months before journeying to France. But each of the things she touched painfully revived the memory of the past. This necklet of pearls was the prince's first gift; these diamonds were in her ears that evening at the opera when her appearance there for the first time had caused such surprise. This white silk dress she had worn at the Italian opera when Patti sung; in this furred mantle Pierre Olsdorf had wrapped her as they were leaving the theater. These fans, these bracelets, she remembered with what sweet words they had been given to her. On each thing she could have put a date, so close in accord were her memory and her heart.