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The Minister turned and saw Albert Styvens standing with nervous interest gazing like one bewitched at the enchanting maiden. "Let me present to you Count Albert Styvens." Esperance inclined her head a little and drew instinctively nearer to Mlle. Frahender. The Count had not moved. The Prince led him away as soon as he had made his adieux to the young girl and the elder lady.
Esperance and Genevieve talked low, and long silences broke their confidences. Count Styvens had brought cigarettes for Maurice and Jean. All three stayed and talked a long time in the painter's room. Alone with men, Styvens lost all the timidity that sometimes made him awkward.
The Baron recognized the opposition of an unchangeable will to his own, which no discussion could influence. Life had resumed its regular course in the apartment on the Boulevard Raspail, but an important relationship was developing in Esperance's life. Count Albert Styvens came three times a week to pursue his philosophic studies with Professor Darbois.
My nature, that I believed so frank and straightforward, seems to get tangled in unexpected twists trying to go the right way. Yes, yes, you are right; I must save myself from myself." Just then the maid came into the room. "Monsieur wants to see Mademoiselle. Madame and Countess Styvens are with him." "Very well; say I will come immediately." Esperance threw her arms around her friend's neck.
The air is getting sharp, and you have no wraps, Esperance." Count Styvens stood up to his full height and stretched his hands to his little idol to help her up, but she had withdrawn before the two arms stretched towards her, and recoiled in a kind of fright. "Did I startle you?" "Oh! No," she said nervously, "But I was dreaming, I was far away...." "Where were you, cousin?" "I don't know.
"She must in some way be prevented from seeing the Countess Styvens," said Genevieve, "but how are we to manage that?" They decided to shorten their stay in Italy by five days. Esperance was to appear on the twentieth of December, about fifteen days after her letter reached them.
Your pulse is racing with fever. We must go back. Think of poor Albert." Esperance drew herself up proudly, replying, "I will never betray him, I will tell the truth, and I will become the wife of the Duke." "You are talking wildly, dearest, the Duke will not marry you." "He will marry me, I swear it!" "Albert will enter the Chartist Monastery and the Countess Styvens will die of sorrow."
"Look there, that is Count Albert Styvens," said a journalist, pointing out the Secretary to his neighbour, a young beauty in a very decolletee gown. The neighbour laughed. "Is he as reserved and as serious as he looks?" she inquired. "So they say." "Poor fellow," answered the pretty woman, with affected pity, examining him through her opera glasses.
She walked quickly, in a hurry to rid herself of her strange cavalier, who pretended to be oblivious of her nervous haste. Esperance requested him to convey to the Countess, his mother, her gratitude for her kindness. Albert Styvens bowed without speaking, and left her in a glow of delight. At the hotel there was no topic except the rehearsal and the reception the Queen had given Esperance.
They found her pale and bathed in perspiration. Her lips were trembling, stammering. It was five minutes before she recovered herself. She described her dream, and the old Mademoiselle prescribed a little walk in the air. The child followed her chaperon with nervous docility. It was the day after the next when Albert Styvens was to come to dinner.
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