She had knotty problems to decide, it must be admitted.... How best to play this marvelous trump, her daughter thrown in her way by chance, was one of these. That plot of Straz, for bringing the girl into contact with the Heir Imperial, might be combined with Adelaide's own original notion of employing the girl's influence to bring about a reconciliation with M. de Bayard.
The indifference of M. de Bismarck had quashed her tentative approaches on the one subject. The silent contempt of de Bayard had thrown the other affair out of gear. To score off both would be magnificent.... As for Straz ... she lost grip of herself when she thought of the Roumanian, murmuring:
"For revenge on him, who has robbed me of my beauty, how cheerfully I would give my soul!"
Juliette, from her corner, saw the change and shuddered. Adelaide turned sharply, to read terror in the girl's face.
"What is it, my chicken? Has anything frightened you?" ...
The terrifying Medusa turned to a maternally-smiling Cybele. She leaned across the intervening space of cushion, to playfully pat the knee of her charge. But the answering smile was as faint as the scent of frozen violets.... The spell of her beauty had been broken when her demon had looked out of her eyes.
"My nerves are not as strong as they were before—what happened in July," she told herself. "And that is another debt I owe to Nicolas. He would be wiser to let me forget him—if oblivion be possible."
Her looking-glass bore out each day what the Roumanian had said to her. "Never will you be able to look in your mirror without remembering me!"
And to keep her smart alive, the Slav had adopted a method of his own invention. Peculiarly ingenious and characteristic of Straz.
At intervals Adelaide received anonymous letters, containing inclosures, wherever she went and by whatever alias she passed. Envelopes directed in varying hands would contain doll's mirrors costing but a sou or two. Pinchbeck-framed ovals or circles of tin or glass, always reflecting the same thing.