The Genius | Page 7

cheeks
flaming, her burning eyes unwontedly hard.
"So! Madame, there is a hair-pin caught in the flounce below your right
ankle."
Involuntarily the Princess quivered, stooped, and extricated the fine
wire pin which even Caroline had not noted. Then she straightened up
hastily, sought to meet her husband's sneer with something like
resolution, faltered before him, and moved slowly away towards the
reception-rooms. The Countess, however, turned to her brother-in-law,
and covered her sister's retreat. Certainly Prince Michael gave her his
attention; and his manner with women of station was unresentable.
Nevertheless, the covert amusement in his voice and in the eyes that
looked after his wife, set even Caroline's experienced teeth on edge.
She talked with him on the prospects of the evening; and it was a theme
so interesting to both of them that neither perceived the little figure,
dressed in black velvet, that stole quietly down from the second floor
and concealed himself on the landing behind the floral drapery that

spread, star-fashion, from the statue of the goddess. An hour or two
before Ivan, filled with a vague excitement, had bribed his old nurse to
dress him in his best, and, having seen his mother and his aunt in their
court-dress, he had been seized with the desire for more. After waiting
in his room as long as he could, the boy had stolen down the staircase
to a point whence he could see the progress of that great ball which was,
in some mysterious way, to change the fortunes of his father's house,
and, with them, the long loneliness of his own, dreamy days.
So he crouched there through the hours, well concealed, a figure
unconsciously pathetic, his great, sad eyes--eyes begotten by his
mother, and with all her own woe in their liquid depths--glowing
brightly in the white, wistful, childish face; the suggestion of a smile on
his straight, delicately chiselled mouth. He had been in his place barely
ten minutes when the great doors opened to the first guests; and, during
the hour that followed, they were scarcely shut. The opera was over.
Fashionable Moscow, accustomed to live at night, swathed itself in furs,
and, grumbling at the unwonted distance, had spun across the city, in
open sleighs, to the distant Gregoriev palace.
Prince Michael, with his wife and his sister-in-law beside him, stood at
the entrance to the gold drawing-room, welcoming the men and women
who were announced in rapid succession: men and women whose
names set Sophia's heart beating with memory. There were few, indeed,
that any major-domo in Petersburg would not have shouted in his best
voice. For all of them were members of the great Russian world:
Apúkhtin and Mirski, Chipraznik, Smirnoff and the omnipresent
Nikitenko--names that had been the last to fade into, the first to
reappear from, the baleful night of Tátar rule. Not one of them all but
had once known Sophia Blashkov intimately: none but greeted
Madame Dravikine as a familiar acquaintance of to-day. But, for the
first time since his wedding-day, Michael Gregoriev felt himself
slighted for that woman he had so long despised. One and all, women
and men alike, they slid by him as rapidly as decency would permit,
nor cared to notice him again, though, from far corners and discreet
retreating-places, they bestowed on him glances that ran the gamut
from curiosity to open horror. Not so did Sophia fare. There was for her

at least one hour when the immediate past was blotted out, and her
heart warmed and thrilled again as it had in that long-past, joyous
winter of her presentation.
By half an hour past midnight the rooms were crowded and there had
settled over the company a hush: that peculiar stillness of expectancy
that is destruction to the nerves of a host. In this special pause, however,
lay something beyond the ordinary: a discomfort, a palpable uneasiness,
that sheathed a subtle threat. Sophia, with her woman's instinct, was no
quicker to perceive it than her husband. They, with Countess Caroline
and every other woman in the rooms, put the same interpretation upon
that significant lull. It spoke thus: "It is late, and he whom we were
commanded to meet is not here. His Imperial Majesty's name forced us
to this house. Now he has not come. Is the thing a trick? Michael
Petrovitch Gregoriev, have you been capable of this? Dared you dream
that such folly of deceit could really help you?"
Such was the unmistakable sentiment in the air when, at a quarter
before one, the sisters met in a corner of the dining-room, and there
passed between them a white-faced look. Then Madame Dravikine
whispered:
"Sophie, what does it mean? Did Nicholas promise?"
The question was a mistake. Princess Gregoriev's lips went white, and
she seemed to