"Well, prince," replied Soublaieff. "She and I are at your orders. What is the matter? Forgive my presumption, but you seem troubled and preoccupied."
"I am. You shall know the cause afterward. Meanwhile I am come to ask a favor of you."
"A favor from me! A master so good as you are asks it of a servant who would give the last drop of his blood to him? Speak, prince, speak!"
The farmer grew pale. The tenderness of a father struggled within him against blind devotion for his master. In the past he had besought the prince not to take from him his daughter to place her at the château. And now it was a question not of a separation of a few leagues but of a journey to France. He hesitated.
"Come, make up your mind to it," Pierre Olsdorf went on. "I want Vera; she alone, with your good will, can do me a great service."
"A great service? Are you going to join the princess?"
"Yes, I am going to her in Paris, and I must come to her with a pure, intelligent, and beautiful young girl such as your daughter is. Ah! Soublaieff, I am very unhappy."
The sad smile with which the prince spoke the words troubled the old servitor still more, but at the sight of the pained look in the face of the generous master to whom he owed everything, his hesitation vanished, and he replied:
"Take Vera, prince; but suffer me to remind you that she is my idolized child, and that the former serf trusts his honor to the honor of the Olsdorfs."
"I will remember. Send for your daughter."
Vera came quickly at her father's first call, and as was her custom, bent to kiss the prince's hand, but he drew her toward him and pressed a chaste kiss on her forehead.
In a few words Soublaieff told his daughter of the agreement with the prince. Vera, blushing with pleasure, bowed low and said, in a subdued voice:
Mingled with her surprise--perhaps without she herself knowing it--was the curiosity natural in a daughter of Eve. She was grieved to leave her father; but to travel, to see Paris! It had been one of her dreams.
"I thank you both," said Pierre Olsdorf after a moment of silence. "Soublaieff, you are no longer a devoted servant, but a friend to me. As for you, sweet Vera, I shall never forget the sacrifice she makes in leaving her family to go with me for awhile."