" corrected Catrina.

"I do not think you can say that, dear," sighed the countess, more in
sorrow than in anger.

"A clever one," answered Catrina. "There is a difference. The clever
ones are the worst."

The countess shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, and Catrina left the
room. She went upstairs to her own little den, where the piano stood. It
was the only room in the house that was not too warm, for here the
window was occasionally opened--a proceeding which the countess
considered scarcely short of criminal.

Catrina began to play, feverishly, nervously, with all the weird force
of her nature. She was like a very sick person seeking a desperate
remedy--racing against time. It was her habit to take her breaking heart
thus to the great masters, to interpret their thoughts in their music,
welding their melodies to the needs of her own sorrow. She only had half
an hour. Of late music had failed her a little. It had not given her the
comfort she had usually extracted from solitude and the piano. She was
in a dangerous humor. She was afraid of trusting herself to De
Chauxville. The time fled, and her humor did not change. She was still
playing when the door opened, and the countess stood before her flushed
and angry, either or both being the effect of stairs upon emotion.

"Catrina!" the elder lady exclaimed. "The sleigh is at the door, and the
count is waiting. I cannot tell what you are thinking of. It is not
every-body who would be so attentive to you. Just look at your hair. Why
can't you dress like other girls?"

"Because I am not made like other girls," replied Catrina--and who knows
what bitterness of reproach there was in such an answer from daughter to
mother?

"Hush, child," replied the countess, whose anger usually took the form
of personal abuse. "You are as the good God made you."

"Then the good God must have made me in the dark," cried Catrina,
flinging out of the room.

"She will be down directly," said the Countess Lanovitch to De
Chauxville, whom she found smoking a cigarette in the hall. "She
naturally--he! he!--wishes to make a careful toilet."

De Chauxville bowed gravely, without committing himself to any
observation, and offered her a cigarette, which she accepted. Having
achieved his purpose, he did not now propose to convey the impression
that he admired Catrina.

In a few moments the girl appeared, drawing on her fur gloves. Before
the door was opened the countess discreetly retired