A most invaluable resource, indeed, in a mountain-country where the evenings are long, is a Pole who knows how to talk and to sing. M. Moriaz liked music; but he liked something else besides. When he could not go into society and was forbidden to work, he grew sleepy after dinner; in order to rouse himself he was glad to play a hand of _bezique_ or _ecarte_. For want of some one better, he played with Mlle. Moiseney; but this make-shift was little to his taste; he disliked immensely coming into too close proximity with the pinched visage and yellow ribbons of Pope Joan. He proposed to Count Larinski to take a hand with him, and his proposal was accepted with the best grace in the world. "Decidedly this man is good for everything," thought M. Moriaz, and he conceived a great liking for him. The result was, that during an entire week Count Abel passed every evening at the Hotel Badrutt.
"Your father is a most peculiar man," said Mlle. Moiseney, indignantly, to Antoinette. "He is shockingly egotistical. He has confiscated M. Larinski. The idea of employing such a man as that to play _bezique_! He will stop coming."
But the count's former savageness seemed wholly subdued. He did not stop coming.
One evening M. Moriaz committed an imprudence. In making an odd trick, he carelessly asked M. Larinski who had been his piano professor.
"One whose portrait I always carry about me," was the reply.
And, drawing from his vest-pocket a medallion, he presented it to M. Moriaz, who, after having looked at it, passed it over to his daughter. The medallion contained the portrait of a woman with blond hair, blue eyes, a refined, lovely mouth, a fragile, delicate being with countenance at the same time sweet and sad, the face of an angel, but an angel who had lived and suffered.
"What an exquisite face!" cried Mlle. Moriaz.
Truly it was exquisite. Some one has asserted that a Polish woman is like punch made with holy-water. One may like neither the punch nor the holy-water, and yet be very fond of Polish women. They form one of the best chapters in the great book of the Creator.
"It is the portrait of my mother," said Count Larinski.
"Are you so fortunate as to still possess her?" asked Antoinette.