to her overstrained nerves. She slipped noiselessly from her room, and, guided by Fanchette, very soon reached Tryphosa's apartments.
The Princess was sitting when Gretchen entered: she rose very slowly, and saluted the visitor.
The room was Tryphosa's bedroom, and a low lamp burnt on the table. It poured a bright glare on the floor, and illuminated Tryphosa's figure distinctly to the height of her waist. Above that the china shade dimmed the outline of things, – of Tryphosa's face, amongst other things.
Gretchen glanced curiously round her. The room in its fundamental arrangement had not been very different from most European rooms with which she had been acquainted: it had a bed, a press, a sofa, a polished table; but an oriental influence was visible on them all. On the bed there was flung a silken cover, so subtly blended in colour that it told its Eastern tale at the first glance. Between the doors of the half-open press there shone the folds of a Turkish shawl; on the sofa were cushions of oriental embroidery; thick Persian carpets relieved the bareness of the polished floor. The very towels were not at all like the towels which Gretchen had ever seen before: each corner, a delicate intricacy of golden and silken threads, would have been treated with tender adoration by any member of any art-needlework society. It is as natural for a Roumanian woman to drag about with her her carpets and her embroidered pillows, as it is for an English lady to travel with her patent waterproof and fitted toilet-case.
On the table there lay two soft feather-fans, ruffling and fluttering noiselessly at each breath of air which touched them. Beside the feather-fans, or rather half buried under them, lay the remains of the mutilated amber rosary; next to it, the last Paul de Kock novel. They lay there as if flung aside as useless, – as if comfort had been sought in both, and found in neither.
"Good evening, mademoiselle," said the Princess, as she rose heavily from her chair. "I am grateful to you for having come, and having come so quick."
It was evident that the rapidity of Gretchen's appearance had much surprised the writer of the note. At all times Gretchen was a puzzle to Tryphosa : her energy, her decision, the ease with which she came to a resolution, and the rapidity with which she acted upon it, were alike strange, bewildering, and tantalising to the slow Roumanian; but this case was especially salient. Considering that it had taken Tryphosa the whole forenoon to mature the idea which had first dawned in her mind yesterday, as she sat at the foot of the beech-tree, and that it had taken her the whole afternoon to fabricate the note of summons which was the point and upshot of her meditations, it was a little startling to find that it had taken Gretchen only ten minutes to answer that summons. If Gretchen's thoughts, words, and deeds had progressed at the same rate as did Tryphosa's, her appearance here ought to have taken place about this time to-morrow.
After the first greeting, Tryphosa put out her hand, and taking Gretchen's fingers in hers, drew the girl slowly forward until the lamplight was full upon her face.
Gretchen remained passive: the Princess's eyes were fixed on her face, steadily and scrutinisingly, – reading her face, line by line, spelling out the meaning, very slowly but very surely.
Gretchen saw that the Princess
