Usually the Princess endured the insults and coarse remarks of her truculent brother with disdainful indifference. To-night she was a little unstrung. Like her mother, she was a passionate lover of music—what the French describe as un amateur. The lovely voices of the two prime donne, the exquisite strains of the violin, had raised her to an exalted mood, in which she only wanted to think of things pure and beautiful.
The Prince’s coarse words and sneering accents jarred upon her sensibilities, and aroused in her a spirit of antagonism. She darted at him an angry and contemptuous glance.
“You are more than usually offensive to-night, Boris. I suppose you have been indulging in your favourite habit of drinking too much champagne.”
The shaft went home. It was well known in his family and amongst his friends that the Prince, in spite of the obligations of his high position, was far from abstemious, and had caused some scandal as a consequence of his unfortunate proclivities.
A dull flush spread over his hard, handsome face. “You little spitfire!” he growled savagely. “I wonder when you will be tamed. Never, so long as our mother refrains from keeping a tighter rein over you.”
For answer, the young Princess swept scornfully away from him, in her pearls and shimmering white satin, a dream of loveliness to everybody except her churlish brother.
Nello hastened home to his frugal supper in Dean Street, prepared for him by the capable hands of his little sister. A roll of notes had been handed to him on his departure by a slim young man, the secretary of the Princess. In spite of his natural grief at the death of the poor old Papa, he was jubilant, over his good luck. In two evenings he had made a small fortune. He handed over the precious roll of notes to Anita.
“They are safe in your keeping, my dear one. But you must buy yourself some good clothes. Heaven knows we have starved and gone shabby long enough. But I cannot believe in it yet. It is still a dream.”
Poor Papa Péron was lying upstairs. Nello to-night would sleep in an improvised bed made up on the shabby sofa in the sitting-room. Anita, with her usual spirit of self-sacrifice, had offered him her own attic, while she made shift, but, of course, he would not hear of that.
He had spent the morning in making arrangements for the funeral; they would bury the kind old Papa in two days from now. Happily, there was no lack of money at the moment. A week sooner, and a pauper’s grave might have awaited him.