“Do you not know me?” she said with a slight look of surprise. She fancied everyone knew her at least by sight.
“I do not,” he answered, “though indeed I am perplexed to think I can ever have lived without knowing you.”
Flattery produced no effect upon her, she lived in an atmosphere of it.
“I am the Princess Fleta,” she answered. Hilary started and coloured a little at the words, and could ill control his emotion. The Princess Fleta held a position in the society of the country, which can only belong to one who stands next to a throne that rules an important nation. She was a personage among crowned heads, one to whom an emperor might, without stooping, offer his love; and Hilary, the child of an officer of the Austrian army, and of a poor daughter of a decayed aristocratic family, Hilary had in the swift stirring of love at first sight, told his own heart that he loved her! It could never be unsaid, and he knew it. He had whispered the words within himself, the whisper would find a hundred echoes. He must always love her.
The Princess turned her wonderful eyes on him and smiled.
“I have done my work for to-night,” she said. “I have amused some of the people, now I should like to dance.”
Hilary was sufficient of a courtier not to be deaf to this command, though his whole soul was in his eyes and all his thoughts fixed on her beauty. He rose and offered her his arm, she put on her mask and they left the room. When Hilary appeared among the crowd that hung round the door of the fortune teller’s sanctum, accompanied by a slender, graceful woman, whose face was hidden save for the great dark eyes, there was an irrepressible murmur of excitement and wonder. “Who can she be?” was repeated again a hundred times. But no one guessed. None dreamed this could be the Princess Fleta herself; for there were but few houses she would visit at, and no one imagined that there could be any inducement to bring her to Madame Estanol’s. The mystery of her presence she explained to Hilary while they danced together.
“I am a student of magic,” she said, “and I have already learned some useful secrets. I can read the hearts of the courtiers who surround me, and I know where to look for true friends. Last night I dreamed of the friend I should find here. Do you care for these mystic occupations?”
“I know nothing of them,” said Hilary.
“Let me teach you then,” said the Princess, with a light laugh. “You will be a good pupil, that I know. Perhaps I may make a disciple of you! and there are not many with whom that is possible.”