Recent emotion still flushed the young girl's cheeks, and the tears of wounded pride, hastily wiped away, gave her a mingled expression of melancholy and haughtiness which at once inspired a desire to pity and a fear of offending her.
She first approached the table where the lady of the house was playing whist. The latter raised her eyes, and merely smiled as she gave her a friendly nod of the head. Vera, without offering her hand, bowed, and made a salutation at once graceful and respectful, which was customary in that country when one lady is much younger than the other; she pressed her lips to the edge of the black lace shawl which the elderly lady wore; then she remained standing a moment near the card-table, looking around the room. There was in this look neither eagerness, nor curiosity, nor coquetry: it was a mere survey of the room and its occupants, and it was easy to see she was seeking no one and expecting no one. She only replied to the salutations addressed her by a slight inclination of the head, sometimes by a smile.
Presently, seeing a vacant seat, she went to take possession of it, and thus found herself near the canapé occupied by the Marquis Adelardi. She was scarcely seated when the [pg 466] young diplomatist who had so recently spoken of her approached with lively eagerness, to which she only responded by a look of indifference and giving him two fingers of her gloved hand.
The Marquis Adelardi took advantage of this favorable opportunity to approach the young German and beg to be presented to the Countess Vera. Adelardi's name was no sooner pronounced than it awoke a remembrance, at first vague, then distinct enough to make her blush. This lively embarrassment was quite evident for a moment. She bowed without speaking as he was presented, and, turning her face immediately away, continued for some moments to converse with the other, but only long enough to recover from her confusion. She speedily put an end to this trifling conversation, and, suddenly turning towards Adelardi, she said, without any trace of her recent embarrassment: “I remember very well, Monsieur le Marquis, your visit at St. Petersburg three years ago, but I was so young then you had probably forgotten me.”
Adelardi replied, as he would have done in any case, but in this instance with truth, that such a supposition was inadmissible.
“And as for me,” he continued, “never having had the honor of a personal acquaintance, I necessarily thought myself wholly unknown to you.”
“Your friends have so often spoken of you that your name was familiar, but your features, I acknowledge, were somewhat effaced from my memory.”
“Yours naturally clung to mine. Besides, I also heard you constantly spoken of.”
There was a moment's silence.
“Have you seen the Princess Catherine lately?” said she.