Part 5 (2/2)

She paused dramatically, every eye turned fully and searchingly upon the handsome face and erect figure so calmly and easily confronting this sudden criticism.

”Well?” he said at last. ”What is it you believe?”

”You've seen--her,” burst out Mrs Jefferson eagerly. ”Now Colonel, no tricks--plain yes or no; I'm certain sure you've seen her--my Mystery.

Haven't you?”

”I will not pretend,” he said, ”to misunderstand you. I have met an old friend, and I hope soon to have the pleasure of introducing her to you all. Not with any mystery about her, as our American friend seems determined to suppose, but simply as the Princess Zairoff--of whom you may have heard before this.”

There was a buzz--a stir--a confused murmur. ”Heard of her--I should think so. You never mean to say she's _here_? I thought she was in Russia--”

”Gracious!” almost shrieked Mrs Jefferson. ”Why it was her husband who died so mysteriously, on the eve of that awful conspiracy. You never mean to say, Colonel Estcourt, that you know her. Why she's one of the celebrities of Europe, and to come here, to this quiet place--and _incognito_?”

”Do you not think,” he said, ”that the fact of being quiet and unknown would just be the one fact she would appreciate? I hope I am not claiming too much from your courtesy when I say that the privilege of her society can only be obtained by a due regard to her wishes in that respect. She wishes only to be known as Madame Zairoff, here.”

”I'm sure,” exclaimed Mrs Jefferson eagerly, ”I'm only too willing to promise anything for the privilege of seeing her. Isn't that the general opinion also?”

There was a murmur of a.s.sent, specially eager on the part of the men.

”I can only a.s.sure you,” continued Colonel Estcourt gravely, ”that you will not regret the slight inconvenience of repressing personal curiosity, for Madame Zairoff is a woman whose gifts and graces are of a marvellous nature and calculated to delight the most critical society.

As Mrs Jefferson told us, she is here for her health. It is an incident we cannot deplore if we are to benefit by her society.”

”You'd better all look out for your hearts, gentlemen,” laughed Mrs Jefferson gaily and excitedly. ”I a.s.sure you I don't believe there's another woman in the world like her. I've seen her under trying circ.u.mstances, and I give you my word of honour that a woman who can preserve any charm of personal appearance under the ordeal of a Turkish Bath--”

There came a discreet little cough from the neighbourhood of Mrs Masterman. The little American stopped abruptly.

”I'd best say no more,” she said. Then she laughed. ”All the same, if you only could see us--”

CHAPTER SEVEN.

CURIOSITY.

There was suppressed but general excitement throughout the hotel all the next day.

Someone had caught sight of the Princess Zairoff, who had driven out after luncheon in a low open carriage with three horses harnessed abreast in Russian fas.h.i.+on, that went like the wind. Colonel Estcourt was beside her, and curiosity was rife as to how he should have known her, and whether accident only was responsible for the meeting of two people, one of whom had come from Russia, and the other from India, to this prosaic English nook, _for their health_.

Mrs Masterman sniffed ominously, as one who scents scandal and impropriety in facts that do not adapt themselves to every-day rules of life. A few other women, suffering from one or other of the fas.h.i.+onable complaints in vogue at this season, agreed with her, that ”it certainly looked very odd.” They did not specify the ”it,” but they were quite convinced of the oddity. It did not occur to them to reflect that there was not the slightest reason for any mystery on the part of the Princess, she being perfectly free and untrammelled, or that Colonel Estcourt had been singularly gloomy and depressed before Mrs Jefferson's graphic description of the mysterious beauty attracted his notice.

There is a certain cla.s.s of people who always shake their heads, and purse up their lips, at the mere suggestion of ”chance,” or ”accident,”

having a fortunate or happy application. They do not apply the same train of reasoning to the reverse side of the picture; the bias of their nature is evidently suspicious. These are the minds that refuse to credit those little misfortunes of picnic and pleasure parties, by which young people lose themselves in mysterious ways, and get into wrong boats and carriages, and generally contrive to upset the plans of their elders, when these plans have been framed with a deeper regard for rationality than for romance. Mrs Masterman belonged to this cla.s.s, which doubtless has its uses, though those uses are not plainly evident on the surface of life; she spent the day in gloomy hints, and mysterious shakes of the head, and insinuations that no good was ever known to spring from a superabundance of feminine charms, which, in the course of nature, must have an evil tendency, and be productive of overweening vanity, extravagance, and even immorality.

Still, even evil prognostications cannot quell the fires of curiosity in the female breast, and every woman in the hotel made her toilette with special care on this eventful evening, as befitting one who owed it to her s.e.x to vindicate even the smallest personal attraction in the presence of rivalry. Colonel Estcourt was not at dinner, so his presence did not restrain comment and speculation, and the tongues did quite as much work as the knives and forks.

”I do wonder what sort of gown she'll wear,” sighed Mrs Ray Jefferson, who was attired in a ”creation” of the great French man-milliner, accursed by husbands of fas.h.i.+onable wives, and whose power is only another note in that ascending scale of absurdity struck by the hands of fas.h.i.+on.

”Perhaps she won't come down in the drawing-room at all,” said Mrs Masterman spitefully, after listening for some time to the remarks around her. ”Colonel Estcourt did not specify any particular night.”

”Oh, I'm sure she'll come,” said Mrs Jefferson, whose nature was specially happy in always a.s.suring her of what she desired. ”I've got an impression that she will--they never fail me. You know I've a singularly magnetic organisation. A great spiritualist in Boston once told me I only needed developing to exhibit extraordinary powers. But I hadn't the time or the patience to go in thoroughly for psychic development. Besides it's really a very exacting pursuit.”

”Exacting rubbis.h.!.+” exclaimed Mrs Masterman impatiently; ”I can't stand all that bosh about higher powers, and developing magnetism. Of course there are a set of people who'd believe anything that seemed to give them a superior organisation; it's only another way of pandering to human vanity. Spiritualism is perfect rubbish. I've seen and heard enough of it to know. I once held a _seance_ at my house, just to convince myself as to its being a trick or not, I was told that the medium could materialise spirit forms. I, of course, asked some people to meet him, and we selected a room and put him behind a screen as he desired, and there we all sat in the dark, like so many fools, for about half-an-hour.--”

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