Della Seggiola bites his lip. At this moment the door opens, Natalie Lipinski enters, and behind her--Stella can hardly believe her eyes--Zino Capito!
"Permit me to present to you my cousin, Prince Capito, Signor della Seggiola," says Natalie, in her fluent but hard-sounding Russian-French. "He hopes to be allowed to profit by your instructions."
Of course the lesson is interrupted. Miss Frazer's eyes, which always remind one more or less of a melancholy-minded rabbit, and which now wear a very sympathetic air, rest with benevolence upon the Prince, who offers della Seggiola his hand with the _aplomb_ for which he is justly celebrated throughout Europe, hurriedly thanks him for the great pleasure he has given him by his art, and prays beforehand for indulgence and patience, since he is, as he maintains, a beginner,--only a beginner.
Natalie conscientiously presents him to the class, blundering, of course, with all the names.
He bows stiffly, looks directly over the gentlemen's heads, scans the ladies with a curious glance, and then goes directly to Stella, beside whom he takes his place, after bowing to her with the most attractive mixture of courtesy and deference. Without being deterred by Miss Frazer's starting off with her transposed song and getting through as much of it as asthma and palpitation of the heart will permit, he begins:
"I made an attempt to see you the day after meeting you at my sister's, but, unfortunately, in vain. Did you get my card?"
"I was so very sorry not to find the ladies at home. Might I be admitted some evening?"
"And how have you amused yourself meanwhile?"
"Oh, I have been very gay this week; Madame de Rohritz took me with her once to the theatre and once to the Bois de Boulogne."
"And when Thérèse does not take you out a little do you devote your entire time to historical studies and to your singing?"
"Sometimes I sit about in the Tuileries,--I have made the acquaintance of an old governess, who chaperons me,--and sometimes I go to the Louvre, which I know as perfectly as ever a guide in Paris."
Is it by mere chance that just at this point of the conversation, which is carried on in an undertone, Fräulein Fuhrwesen turns and stares at the Prince and Stella?