steps down the slippery
floor of the _salon_, with its dimly-lighted candelabra of massive
silver and its half-seen portraits, and, opening the great door at the
opposite end, found herself in an antechamber which communicated with a
grand staircase, both ascending and descending. To descend was evidently
useless--she could not go out into the streets of Vienna alone at night
and in her fanciful dress. She went up the wide staircase in the hope of
finding some female domestics who would help her; as she reached the
next flight the sound of music, subdued and solemn, fell upon her ear.
She knew enough of German music to know that it was the tune of a hymn.

The door of the room from which the sound seemed to come stood partly
open. She went in.

Before an harpsichord, with her hand carelessly passing over the keys,
and her head turned at the sound of footsteps, stood the Princess
Isoline. The light of a branched candelabra fell full upon her stately
figure, revealing the compassionate, lofty expression of her beautiful
face. The girl crossed the room towards her and fell on her knees at her
feet.

"Child," said the Princess, "what is it? Why are you here?"

"I cannot tell," said the girl; and now at last she found it possible to
weep. "I do not know what has happened. The Maestro has forsaken me, and
I have insulted the Prince."

Gradually, in a broken way, she told her story, kneeling by the
Princess, who stood serenely, her fingers still wandering over the
harpsichord keys, her left hand caressing the girl's hair and cheek.

"He was a wonderful child," said the Princess at last, more to herself
than to Faustina, for as she spoke she played again the simple notes of
the Lutheran hymn. "He was truly a wonderful child. A very Christ-child,
it seems to me, in his simple life and sudden death; for, though what he
did was little, yet the lives of all of us seem different for his
life--changed since his death. As for me, since his life crossed my path
I have seen more, it seems to me, of the mercy of God and of Christ's
working in paths and among lives where I never thought to look for it
before."

Faustina did not reply, and the Princess played several bars of the hymn
before she spoke again.

"Do you not see," she said at last, "the blessing it has been also to my
brother the Prince?--for the desire that he felt, surely a noble one, to
refine the life of art by the sacred touch of religion--the effort that
he mad