The Nabob, Volume 2 | Page 3

honest face beaming with joy at being reproduced, and so true, so natural, that Paul uttered a cry of admiration.
"Isn't it good?" she asked ingenuously. "A few touches there and there--" She had taken the tool and the little sponge and pushed the stand into what little light there was. "It would be a matter of a few hours; but it couldn't go to the Exhibition. This is the 22d; everything had to be sent in long ago."
"Pshaw! With influence--"
She frowned, and the wicked, drooping expression played about her mouth.
"True. The Duc de Mora's prot��g��e. Oh! you need not excuse yourself. I know what people say of him, and I care as little for it as that!" She threw a pellet of clay which flattened out against the wall. "Perhaps, indeed, by dint of imagining what is not--But let us drop those vile things," she said, with a toss of her little aristocratic head. "I am anxious to give you pleasure, Minerva. Your friend shall go to the Salon this year."
At that moment the odor of caramel, of hot pastry invaded the studio, where the twilight was falling in fine, decolorized dust; and the Fairy appeared, with a plate of fritters in her hand, a true fairy, rejuvenated in gay attire, arrayed in a white tunic which afforded glimpses, beneath the yellowed lace, of her lovely old woman's arms, the charm that is the last to die.
"Look at my kuchlen, darling; see if they're not a success this time. Oh! I beg your pardon; I didn't see that you had company. Ah! It's Monsieur Paul? Are you pretty well, Monsieur Paul? Pray taste one of my cakes."
And the amiable old lady, to whom her costume seemed to impart extraordinary animation, came prancing forward, balancing her plate on the ends of her doll-like fingers.
"Let him alone," said Felicia calmly. "You can offer him some at dinner."
"At dinner!"
The dancer was so thunderstruck that she nearly overturned her pretty cakes, which were as light and dainty and excellent as herself.
"Why, yes, I am keeping him to dinner with us. Oh! I beg you," she added with peculiar earnestness, seeing that the young man made a gesture of refusal, "I beg you, do not say no. You can do me a real service by staying to-night. Come, I did not hesitate a moment ago, you know."
She had taken his hand; really there seemed to be a strange disproportion between her request and the anxious, imploring tone in which it was made. Paul still held back. He was not properly dressed. How could she expect him to stay? A dinner-party at which she was to have other guests.
"My dinner-party? Why, I will countermand the orders for it. That is the way I feel. We three will dine alone, you and I and Constance."
"But, Felicia, my child, you can't think of doing such a thing. Upon my word! What about the--the other who will soon be here?"
"Parbleu! I will write to him to stay at home."
"Wretched girl, it is too late."
"Not at all, It's just striking six. The dinner was to be at half-past seven. You must send him this at once."
She wrote a note, in haste, on a corner of the table.
"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu! what a strange girl!" murmured the dancer, lost in bewilderment, while Felicia, enchanted, transfigured, joyously sealed her letter.
"There, my excuses are all made. The sick-headache wasn't invented for Kadour. Oh! how glad I am!" she added, when the letter had gone; "what a delightful evening we will have! Kiss me, Constance. This won't prevent our doing honor to your kuchlen, and we shall enjoy seeing you in a pretty gown that makes you look younger than I."
Less than that would have induced the dancer to forgive this latest whim of her dear demon and the crime of l��se-majest�� in which she had made her an accomplice. The idea of treating such a personage so cavalierly! No one else in the world would have done it, no one but her. As for Paul de G��ry, he made no further attempt at resistance, being caught once more in the network from which he believed that he had set himself free by absence, but which, as soon as he crossed the threshold of the studio, suppressed his will and delivered him over, fast bound and conquered, to the sentiment that he was firmly resolved to combat.
* * * * *
It was evident that the dinner, a veritable gourmand's dinner, superintended by the Austrian even in its least important details, had been prepared for a guest of first-rate consequence. From the high Berber chandeliers of carved wood, with seven branches, which shed a flood of light upon the richly embroidered cloth, to the long-necked wine-jugs of curious and exquisite shape, the sumptuous table appointments