and the invitation. With a smile, in which honey was overflowing, he said:
"That young man seems very ill. A visit to more favorable climates might save him. I must try that he does not reject the means which I shall offer him for that purpose. I foresee resistance, but I shall do what I can to overcome it, out of regard for art, and through good-will for a young man who, besides many sympathetic traits, has this on his side, that he rejoices in the exceptional favor of Prince Zeno."
Had he been able, Darvid would have kissed himself for that phrase, he felt so well satisfied with it; especially when the prince answered with animation:
"This, in the full sense of the words, means speaking and acting beautifully! You use the gifts of fortune in a manner truly noble."
"Not fortune, prince, not fortune!" exclaimed Darvid, "but iron labor."
"Such toilers as you are the knights of the contemporary world," answered the prince, with vivacity; "the Du Guesclins and Cids of the present century."
He rose and, while pressing the hand of that Cid, fixed again in his memory the date of the hunt, which was not distant. Prince Zeno was an aristocrat of the purest blood, possessing a wide popularity which was fairly well deserved.
Darvid was radiant. While accompanying the prince to the door of the antechamber he looked as if no coil of serpents had ever crawled up in his bosom, which was now beating with delight and with pride. The prince halted still a moment at the door, as if to recall something.
"Pardon me an indiscreet question, but this interests me immensely. Is there truth in the reports which are circulating in the city, that Baron Blauendorf is to have the honor in the near future of receiving the hand of your elder daughter?"
The expression of Darvid's face changed quickly, it became sharp and severe.
"Were there any truth in the report," answered he, "I should try to destroy it together with the report."
"And you would be right, perfectly right!" exclaimed the prince.
Then he bent his lips almost to Darvid's ear and whispered:
"There is no Pactolus which such a young buck as Baron Emil would not drink up. He is a genuine devourer of fortunes. He has swallowed one already and the half of another."
He laughed and added at once, with immense affability:
"I see your son frequently—that worthy Kranitski presented him a year ago to us; I and my wife are very, very thankful. He is sympathetic, handsome, and a highly intellectual young man, who does you honor."
He went out. Darvid stood at the round table sunk in thought, with pins of irony in his smile and his eyes, with a cloud of wrinkles between his brows. That young sculptor, the favorite of Prince Zeno, with clothing almost in tatters, brought consumption on himself unhindered, till a parvenu appeared with his money-bag and rescued the pocket of the aristocrat, receiving in return a visit and an invitation to hunt. "Behold the significance of money! Almost infinite power—ha! ha! ha!"
Internal laughter bore him away, and in his brain sounded the word: "Wretchedness! Wretchedness!"
What was it specially that he called wretchedness? He was not clearly conscious himself of this, but the feeling of it penetrated him. Again he heard the prince saying "that honest Kranitski," and a wave of blood rushed to his forehead. Everything that he had forgotten a moment earlier returned to his mind; the prince's voice roared in his ears: "That honest Kranitski." He repeated a number of times to himself, in a hissing whisper, "honest! honest!" And then he said:
"Wretchedness!"
That Baron Emil, the young buck capable of gulping down many a Pactolus! And he was to possess the hand of his daughter, with a considerable part of that fortune won by iron labor. Is Irene in love with him? But the baron is a vibrio and a monkey all in one. There is need to think over this family matter, lest a misfortune might happen. He cast a glance at the door behind which was darkness, thick, silent, immovable. It resembled a window opened into a great and impenetrable secret.
"I must have the house lighted up," thought he. At this moment he heard the dull rumble of a carriage in the gateway as it entered. He pressed the button of the electric bell.
"Is that the lady who has come?"
"Yes, serene lord."
"Tell the coachman to wait. He will take me to the club."
When the servant opened the door the rustle of silk came in like the sound of wind. Two long silken robes passed over the floor of the anteroom and farther on in the darkness of the chambers, which was dispelled by the light of the lamp, borne by the servant advancing in front of them.
The glittering gnomes called forth by that light sprang along the gildings, polished walls, and furniture; ran out of the darkness, ran into it again; were lighted up and quenched on the inclined heads, drooping lids, and silent lips of the two women in rich array and gloomy.
CHAPTER II
Malvina Darvid was one of those women to whom old age is very tardy in coming, and whose beauty, modified in each season of life, never leaves them. For this last she was indebted less to the features of her face than to the immense charm of her movements, her smile, her expression, her speech. She retained yet the same pale, golden hair which she had years earlier, which she arranged high above her low forehead, calling to mind the statues of Grecian women. In contrast with that hair, and her slightly faded but delicate complexion, shone, from under dark brows, large eyes, also dark, with a very mild, warm expression, now bright, now tempered by a deep inevitable cloud of pensiveness. In a robe covered with lace, in the glitter of a star of diamonds in the bright aureole of her hair, she greeted the numerous acquaintances who entered her box at the theatre, with the affability and freedom of a perfect society lady. She was even celebrated in that great city for the qualities which constitute so-called society personages, and which, in those who knew her past, roused a certain wonder. It was known to all that that past was very modest. Darvid in his youth, which was far less brilliant than his present, married a poor orphan, a teacher. But Malvina Darvid was of those women who need only a golden setting to sparkle like diamonds. She shone in the great world with a charm, an elegance, a power of speech which were the same as if she had been its own daughter. She was radiant with satisfaction, with serenity, often even with joyous animation, and only now and then did a slight wrinkle, with a barely discernible line furrowing her Grecian forehead, sink itself and cast on her face an expression of weariness, or the corners of her lips, still red and shapely, drop downward and make that oval, white, delicate face ten years older than it seemed to be usually. But those were only short and rare moments, after which Malvina Darvid was again entirely flooded with the brilliancy of her beautiful eyes, her splendid toilet, the sounds of her metallic voice, warm and full of sweetness. She seemed barely a few years older than her elder daughter. Sometimes guests left her box with the words:
"She is more beautiful than her daughter."
And offener still: "She is more charming and sympathetic than her daughter."
Still nature had been no stepmother to Irene Darvid; but life, though so short thus far, had stamped on her exterior a mark which, while it astonished and discouraged, repelled.
If
