 she
answers, "Yes, that is her name. You must have met her in Petersburg."

"Petersburg is very dim in my memories," he replies, evasively. "Its
baccarat is what made the deepest impression on my remembrance and my
fortunes. Now I think of it, however, I recollect her quite well: her
husband was Anatole Sabaroff, and Lustoff shot him in a duel about her?
Am I right?"

"So charming for her!" says Nina Curzon. "Englishwomen never have
anything happen for them picturesque like that: our men always die of
indigestion, or going after a fox."

"It is very curious."

"What is? Dyspepsia? Hunting?"

"How one comes across people."

"'After long years,'" quotes Mrs. Curzon, with mock romance in her
tones. "Generally, I think," she adds, with a little yawn, "we can never
get rid of our people, the world is so small, and there is really only
one set in it that is decent, so we can't ever get out of it. It must
have been very nice in Romeo and Juliet's days, when a little drive to
Mantua took you into realms wholly inaccessible to your Verona
acquaintances. Nowadays, if you run away from anybody in London you are
sure to run against them in Yeddo or Yucatan."

"Constancy made easy, like the three R's," says Gervase. "Unfortunately,
despite our improved facilities, we are not constant."

"He means to imply that he threw over the Sabaroff," thinks Mrs. Curzon;
"but he is such a boaster of his _bonnes fortunes_ that one can never
know whether he is lying."

"Pray let me make you known to Madame Sabaroff," says Lady Usk to him, a
little later. "She is such a very dear friend of mine, and I see you
have been looking at her ever since she entered the room."

"She is a very handsome person: any one would look at her," replies her
cousin. Were he not so perfectly well-bred and impassive, it might
almost be said that the suggested presentation fills him with some vague
nervousness.

Nina Curzon watches him inquisitively as he is led up and presented to
Madame Sabaroff.

"I think I have had the honor before now, in Petersburg," murmurs
Gervase. She looks at him very coldly.

"I think not," she replies. The words are of the simplest, but _c'est le
ton qui fait la musique_, and, for the solitary time in his existence,
Lord Gervase is embarrassed.

Brandolin, playing with the colley dog near at hand, listens and
observes.

Lady Usk is not so observant. "It is a long time since he was in
Russia," she says to her friend, "I dare say you have forgotten. His
father was alive, and his name was Baird then, you know."

Xenia Sabaroff makes a little polite gesture expressive of entire
indifference to the change in these titles. With an action which would
be rude in any woman less high-bred, she turns away her head and speaks
to Brandolin, ignoring the acquaintance and the presence of Gervase.

Across the good-natured and busy brain of her hostess there flashes an
electric and odious thought: is it possible that Usk may be right, and
that there may be something wrong, after all, in this her latest and
most adored friend? She feels that she will die of suffocated curiosity
if she do not speedily get her cousin alone and learn all he has ever
known or heard of the Princess Sabaroff.

"A snub direct!" whispers Lawrence Hamilton to Mr. Wootton.

"Or a cut direct: which?" says that far-sighted gentleman.

"Anyhow, it's delightful to see him let in for it," reflects Usk, who
has also observed the incident from where he stands by the liqueurs.

Gervase, who has never been known to be at a loss in any position,
however difficult, colors and looks at once annoyed and confused. He
stands before Xenia Sabaroff for a few moments hesitating and
irresolute, conscious that every one is looking at him; then he takes
refuge with Lady Dawlish, whom he detests, because she is the nearest
person to him.

"Madame Sabaroff is eclipsing the black women," says that lady.

"What black women?" asks Gervase, very inattentive and bored. She tells
him the story of the Hindoo harem, and he hears no word of it.

"Brandolin is always so odd," he says, indifferently, watching the hand
of Xenia Sabaroff as it rests on the shoulder of the Babe, who is
leaning against her knees gazing at her adoringly.

Gervase is angered; irritated, interested, and mortified all at once. He
has never been in an absurd position before, and he is aware that he was
in one a moment ago, and that the whole house-party of Surrenden Court
saw him in it. "What a fool Dolly was not to tell me she was here!" he
thinks, forgetting that his cousin and hostess has not the remotest
suspicion that he and the Princess Xenia have ever met each other
before.

"Seven years!" he thinks. "Good heavens! what an eternity! And she is
handsomer than she was then; very handsome; wonderfully handsome."

He looks at her all the while from under his half-closed eyelids, whilst
he talks he knows not what kind of rubbish to Lady Dawlish.

Xenia Sabaroff does not once look his way. The moment which she had
dreaded has passed, and it has made no impression whatever upon her: her
indifference reconciles her to herself. Is it possible, she wonders,
that she ever loved, or ever thought that she loved, this man?

"Why will you always treat me as a stranger, Madame Sabaroff?" murmurs
Gervase to her that night when for a moment he is alone near her, while
the cotillion overture commences.

"You are a stranger--to me," replies Xenia Sabaroff; and as she speaks
she looks full at him.

He colors with discomfiture. "Because in the due course of nature I have
succeeded to my father's title, you seem to consider that I have changed
my whole identity," he says, with great irritation.

She is silent; she looks down on the white ostrich-feathers of her fan.
He is vaguely encouraged by that silence. "Strangers! That is surely a
very cold and cruel word between those who once were friends?"

The direct appeal to her makes her look up once more, with great
_hauteur_ in the coldness of her face.

"Sir, I think when people have forgotten that each other exist, it is as
though they had never met. They are perhaps something more distant still
than strangers, for to strangers friendship in the future is possible;
but those who have been separated by oblivion on the one hand and by
contempt on the other are parted as surely and eternally as though death
had divided them."

Gervase gathers some solace from the very strength of the words. She
would not, he thinks, feel so strongly unless she felt more than he
allows: he gazes at her with feigned humility and unfeigned admiration
and regret.

"If Madame Sabaroff," he murmurs, "can doubt her own powers of
compelling remembrance, she is the one person on earth only who can do
so."

She is stung to anger.

"I am really at loss to decide whether you are intentionally insolent or
unintentionally insincere. You are possibly both."

"I am neither. I am only a man who passionately and uselessly rebels
against his fate."

"Who regrets his own actions, you mean to say. That is nothing
uncommon."

"Well, who regrets the past, if you will put it so, and who would atone
for it would you allow him."

"Atone! Do you suppose that you owe me reparation? It is I who owe you
thanks for a momentary oblivion which did me immeasurable service."

"That is a very harsh doctrine. The Princess Xenia whom I knew was
neither so stern nor so sceptical."

"The Princess Xenia whom you knew was a child, a foolish child; she is
dead, quite as much dead as though she were under so many solid square
feet of Baltic ice. Put her from your thoughts: you will never awake
her."

Then she rises and leaves him and goes out of the ball-room.

Throughout that evening he