SANTA; OR, A WOMAN’S TRAGEDY.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “AGNES TREMORNE,” &c.
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CHAPTER I.
I had been for two or three months a regular guest at Madame de L’s weekly concerts. She was a Russian, and assembled at her house the most distinguished foreigners who were in Paris. It was a privilege, therefore, for an undistinguished Englishman to be admitted there. She had known my father, and for the sake of “Auld Lang Syne” was most kind and courteous to me.
Soon after I first went to her house, I was much struck with the appearance of a lady whom I rarely met anywhere else in Paris. She seemed attracted by the music (certainly the best of its kind which could be heard in this Paradise of Artists, even more than of women), for she entered as the first notes of the orchestra sounded, and before the last echoes had died away she was gone.
She was the Countess Rabenfels, the widow, as it was generally supposed, of a former Austrian minister in Rome. I had been presented to her, and we had exchanged a few words, but there was an indescribable something about this lady which was an effectual barrier to all attempts on my part to improve our acquaintance. An indifference scarcely veiled by a kind of negligent politeness, which was, to say the least of it, discouraging. She attracted, and yet repelled. In society, to be above or beyond the ordinary level is not an advantage, and Madame Rabenfels was not popular. I was not surprised at it. Amongst the pretty faces and conventional smiles around, the aspect of this lady was as incongruous as that of a Greek Muse would be among Dresden china shepherdesses.
She was usually plainly but richly dressed. She wore few ornaments, and I noticed that the arrangements of her dress, though graceful, were
