Rejoicing in my success at the Countess’ and in my secure position in this house, I could not fix my attention on my shorthand exercises. I must have been daydreaming for some time when I became aware of voices in the room below me, that is, an unoccupied guest room where, as Miss Pride told me, she was sketching her memoirs. I opened my door and stood in the hall listening. I could hear nothing but an unintelligible murmur and was just returning to my room when a door downstairs was opened and Hopestill’s voice came up to me. “But how peculiar you are about it, Auntie! Why isn’t it possible that I saw her in Chichester?”

“She wasn’t there that summer. But it’s not of the slightest consequence whether her face is familiar to you, Hope. The important thing about Sonie is that she’s contracted to me.”

I could fairly see the girl shrug her shoulders as she replied, “I understand, dear. I shall keep my hands off.”

“You do not become less vulgar. Good-night.”

I slipped back into my room. Lying face downward on my bed, I could hear the eccentric fury of my heart-beat.

THREE

1

Hopestill Mather, when she came home from New York for the week-ends, was so disarmingly attentive to me that I came to think of her as an ally though I would have preferred to look on her as an enemy. On certain evenings, usually Friday, when she stayed at home, she invited me to come to her room where she served me hot buttered rum which she prepared with water kept steaming in a silver pot under a cozy. Frankly impressed by the way the Countess had been struck with me (To my blushing delight she said once, “Aunt Lucy is going to give Berthe what-for one of these days if she doesn’t stop telling everyone that she found you.”), she was endeavoring, I thought, to discover for herself what it was that had so rapidly elevated me to a place of honor in the salon. It was not, she warned me, a very high distinction, for the Countess was a little too hyperbolical to be taken quite seriously. She was bound in conscience, moreover, to point out to me that I had arrived on the scene just at the moment that Annaliese Speyer’s departure had, so to speak, left a vacancy. At the same time, she expressed her congratulations and told me that if I “handled” the Viennese properly I would find her a faithful friend. She had never been urged to entrench herself in the little society of the music room, possibly because, knowing too much about the Countess, she had never paid her the homage strictly required if one were to become a habitué.

Having gone this far, Hopestill decided to continue to the end and refilling my mustache cup with rum presented me with the bare and slightly scandalous facts about her cousin by marriage.