Steinmetz moved a little.  He placed himself in front of Catrina, who had suddenly lost color.  She could only see his broad back.  The others in the room could not see her at all.  She was rather small, and Steinmetz hid her as behind a screen.

“Ah!” he said to the countess, “his marriage!  But Madame the Countess assuredly knows of that.”

“How could she?” put in De Chauxville.

“The countess knew that Prince Paul was going to be married,” explained Karl Steinmetz very slowly, as if he wished to give some one time.  “With such a man as he, ‘going to be’ is not very far from being.”

“Then it is an accomplished fact?” said the countess sharply.

“Yesterday,” answered Steinmetz.

“And you were not there!” exclaimed Countess Lanovitch, with uplifted hands.

“Since I was here,” answered Steinmetz.

The countess launched into a disquisition on the heinousness of marrying any but a compatriot.  The tone of her voice was sharp, and the volume of her words almost amounted to invective.  As Steinmetz was obviously not listening, the lady imparted her views to the Baron de Chauxville.

Steinmetz waited for some time, then he turned slowly toward Catrina without actually looking at her.

“It is dangerous,” he said, “to stay in this warm room with your furs.”

“Yes,” she answered, rather faintly; “I will go and take them off.”

Steinmetz held the door open for her, but he did not look at her.

CHAPTER XVI

THE THIN END

“But I confess I cannot understand why I should not be called the Princess Alexis—­there is nothing to be ashamed of in the title.  I presume you have a right to it?”

Etta looked up from her occupation of fixing a bracelet, with a little glance of enquiry toward her husband.

They had been married a month.  The honeymoon—­a short one—­had been passed in the house of a friend, indeed a relation of Etta’s own, a Scotch peer who was not above lending a shooting-lodge in Scotland on the tacit understanding that there should be some quid pro quo in the future.

In answer Paul merely smiled, affectionately tolerant of her bright sharpness of manner.  Your bright woman in society is apt to be keen at home.  What is called vivacity abroad may easily degenerate into snappiness by the hearth.

“I think it is rather ridiculous being called plain Mrs. Howard-Alexis,” added Etta, with a pout.

They were going to a ball—­the first since their marriage.  They had just dined, and Paul had followed his wife into the drawing-room.  He took a simple-minded delight in her beauty, which was of the description that is at its best in a gorgeous setting.  He stood looking at her, noting her grace, her pretty, studied movements.  There were, he reflected, few women more beautiful—­none, in his own estimation, fit to compare with her.