“Madame has to command, and I fly to obey her. I conjecture Monsieur Ehrenstein’s latest flame to be a little impossible Athenian, living the Gods know where and how.”
“Latest?” cried the baroness, with a look of displeased inquiry.
“Ah! it is to see that Madame’s great mind soars in the empyrean of diplomatic considerations or upon ground more ethereal still. Her delicate ears do not catch an echo of the vulgar gossip upon which grosser ears are fed.”
“I have requested you, M. Michaelopoulos, to discourse to me in prose. What is the vulgar gossip you refer to?”
The poet looked chill, and said, with brutal directness:
“My faith! Madame, your interesting nephew is thought to be the lover of that dainty morsel of womanhood, the Natzelhuber.”
Madame von Hohenfels frowned, and then laughed.
“I have not remarked that nobility is specially fastidious in such matters. Women! Well, that is frankly a department in which there is no accounting for tastes, and good blood shows as pretty an eccentricity as any other.”
The English statesman was approaching, and the poet walked away with an expression of countenance clearly indicating an intention to remember the baroness’s snub. The dance was over, and in the pause which ensued, Madame Jarovisky, mindful of Rudolph’s information that Andromache was a very promising pupil of Mademoiselle Natzelhuber, politely requested her to favour the company with a specimen of her powers.
“Your mistress has not yet arrived,” she added by way of encouragement, “and you can take advantage of her absence.”
Rudolph warmly seconded Madame Jarovisky, and thus flatteringly besought, Andromache suffered herself to be led by the young Austrian to the grand piano. At first she was terribly nervous, and the notes faltered and shook unsteadily beneath her fingers, but discovering that small attention was really paid to her, and drinking in courage and nerve from Rudolph’s pleasant glances of admiration, she gradually acquired a firmer touch, and played fairly well, with brilliancy and just expression, a dance of Rubinstein’s. She was more than half-way through her performance, when a whisper ran through the rooms:--“The Natzelhuber!”
The Cabinet Minister immediately adjusted his eyeglass, and held his sharp, heaven-aspiring nose in a beatific pose that denoted an expectation of diversion. Madame von Hohenfels smiled blandly, well pleased that somebody else should have the onerous charge and torture of entertaining the great woman. Photini was marshalled fussily up the room by anxious little Dr. Jarovisky, himself a blaze of medals and decorations, while his wife advanced with an air of pathetic deprecation and prayer, as if by such feeble weapons the thunder of this female Jove might best be averted. Phontini did not meet her hand, but just glanced at her in calm disdain, and nodded a serene, impersonal and inclusive gaze around, walked to a distant mantelpiece and placidly took her stand there.