"A great service? Are you going to join the princess?"
"Yes, I am going to her in Paris, and I must come to her with a pure, intelligent, and beautiful young girl such as your daughter is. Ah! Soublaieff, I am very unhappy."
The sad smile with which the prince spoke the words troubled the old servitor still more, but at the sight of the pained look in the face of the generous master to whom he owed everything, his hesitation vanished, and he replied:
"Take Vera, prince; but suffer me to remind you that she is my idolized child, and that the former serf trusts his honor to the honor of the Olsdorfs."
"I will remember. Send for your daughter."
Vera came quickly at her father's first call, and as was her custom, bent to kiss the prince's hand, but he drew her toward him and pressed a chaste kiss on her forehead.
In a few words Soublaieff told his daughter of the agreement with the prince. Vera, blushing with pleasure, bowed low and said, in a subdued voice:
"I am ready to obey you, father."
Mingled with her surprise—perhaps without she herself knowing it—was the curiosity natural in a daughter of Eve. She was grieved to leave her father; but to travel, to see Paris! It had been one of her dreams.
"I thank you both," said Pierre Olsdorf after a moment of silence. "Soublaieff, you are no longer a devoted servant, but a friend to me. As for you, sweet Vera, I shall never forget the sacrifice she makes in leaving her family to go with me for awhile."