peared, a tall, thin fellow of about thirty, very fair
with grey, pale, harsh eyes, and a pointed beard and flowing curly hair
which elongated his livid, cloudy face. He spoke indifferent French in a
low voice and without a gesture. And he declared that the Princess could
not be found; he had looked for her everywhere. Possibly, if somebody had
displeased her, she had shut herself up in her room and gone to bed,
leaving her guests to amuse themselves in all freedom in whatever way
they might choose.

"Why, but here she is!" suddenly said Massot.

Rosemonde was indeed there, in the vestibule, watching the door as if she
expected somebody. Short, slight, and strange rather than pretty, with
her delicate face, her sea-green eyes, her small quivering nose, her
rather large and over-ruddy mouth, which was parted so that one could see
her superb teeth, she that day wore a sky-blue gown spangled with silver;
and she had silver bracelets on her arms and a silver circlet in her pale
brown hair, which rained down in curls and frizzy, straggling locks as
though waving in a perpetual breeze.

"Oh! whatever you desire, Monsieur l'Abbe," she said to Pierre as soon as
she knew his business. "If they don't take your old man in at our asylum,
send him to me, I'll take him, I will; I will sleep him somewhere here."

Still, she remained disturbed, and continually glanced towards the door.
And on the priest asking if Baroness Duvillard had yet arrived, "Why no!"
she cried, "and I am much surprised at it. She is to bring her son and
daughter. Yesterday, Hyacinthe positively promised me that he would
come."

There lay her new caprice. If her passion for chemistry was giving way to
a budding taste for decadent, symbolical verse, it was because one
evening, whilst discussing Occultism with Hyacinthe, she had discovered
an extraordinary beauty in him: the astral beauty of Nero's wandering
soul! At least, said she, the signs of it were certain.

And all at once she quitted Pierre: "Ah, at last!" she cried, feeling
relieved and happy. Then she darted forward: Hyacinthe was coming in with
his sister Camille.

On the very threshold, however, he had just met the friend on whose
account he was there, young Lord George Eldrett, a pale and languid
stripling with the hair of a girl; and he scarcely condescended to notice
the tender greeting of Rosemonde, for he professed to regard woman as an
impure and degrading creature. Distressed by such cold