“To be of use. And a little that she may be seen by some English friend, who may tell me.”
“Shall I talk to her?”
“If you will be so good. Learn, if you please, what she is.”
“Your wishes are law,” he rejoined. “Will you present me?”
“It is not necessary,” the Princess answered. She beckoned to a stout gentleman who wore whiskers trimmed à la mode du Roi, and had laurel leaves on his coat collar. “A thousand thanks.”
He lingered a moment to take part in the Princess’s reception of the Academician. Then he joined a group about old Prince Adam Czartoriski, who was describing a recent visit to Cracow, that last morsel of free Poland, soon to pass into the maw of Austria. A little apart, the girl in black bent over the case of miniatures, comparing some with a list, and polishing others with a square of silk. Presently he found himself beside her. Their eyes met.
“I am told,” he said, bowing, “that you are my countrywoman. The Princess thought that I might be of use to you.”
The girl had read his errand before he spoke and a shade flitted across her face. She knew, only too well, that her hold on this rock of safety to which chance had lifted her—out of a gulf of peril and misery of which she trembled to think—was of the slightest. Early, almost from the first, she had discovered that the Princess’s benevolence found vent rather in schemes for the good of many than in tenderness for one. But hitherto she had relied on the daughter’s affection, and a little on her own usefulness. Then, too, she was young and hopeful, and the depths from which she had escaped were such that she could not believe that Providence would return her to them.
But she was quick-witted, and his opening frightened her. She guessed at once that she was not to be allowed to await Cécile’s return, that her fate hung on what this Englishman, so big and bland and forceful, reported of her.
She braced herself to meet the danger. “I am obliged to the Princess,” she said. “But my ties with England are slight. I came to France with my father when I was ten years old.”