"Hitherto. It is an indignity, and I have wished at least to make it difficult for them. But I have a little document in my writing-desk which I have only to sign and send back to the Prince."
"Then it will be all over?"
The Baroness lifted her hand, and dropped it again.
"Of course I shall keep my title; at least, I shall be at liberty to keep it if I choose. And I suppose I shall keep it.
One must have a name. And I shall keep my pension.
It is very small--it is wretchedly small; but it is what I live on."
"And you have only to sign that paper?" Acton asked.
The Baroness looked at him a moment. "Do you urge it?"
He got up slowly, and stood with his hands in his pockets.
"What do you gain by not doing it?"
"I am supposed to gain this advantage--that if I delay, or temporize, the Prince may come back to me, may make a stand against his brother.
He is very fond of me, and his brother has pushed him only little by little."
"If he were to come back to you," said Acton, "would you--would you take him back?"
The Baroness met his eyes; she colored just a little. Then she rose.
"I should have the satisfaction of saying, 'Now it is my turn.
I break with your serene highness!' "
They began to walk toward the carriage. "Well," said Robert Acton, "it 's a curious story! How did you make his acquaintance?"
"I was staying with an old lady--an old Countess--in Dresden.
She had been a friend of my father's. My father was dead;
I was very much alone. My brother was wandering about the world in a theatrical troupe."
"Your brother ought to have stayed with you," Acton observed, "and kept you from putting your trust in princes."
The Baroness was silent a moment, and then, "He did what he could," she said. "He sent me money. The old Countess encouraged the Prince; she was even pressing. It seems to me,"
Madame Munster added, gently, "that--under the circumstances--
I behaved very well."
Acton glanced at her, and made the observation--he had made it before--that a woman looks the prettier for having unfolded her wrongs or her sufferings. "Well," he reflected, audibly, "I should like to see you send his serene highness--somewhere!"
Madame Munster stooped and plucked a daisy from the grass.
"And not sign my renunciation?"
"Well, I don't know--I don't know," said Acton.
"In one case I should have my revenge; in another case I should have my liberty."
Acton gave a little laugh as he helped her into the carriage.
"At any rate," he said, "take good care of that paper."
A couple of days afterward he asked her to come and see his house.
The visit had already been proposed, but it had been put off in consequence of his mother's illness. She was a constant invalid, and she had passed these recent years, very patiently, in a great flowered arm-chair at her bedroom window. Lately, for some days, she had been unable to see any one; but now she was better, and she sent the Baroness a very civil message. Acton had wished their visitor to come to dinner; but Madame M; auunster preferred to begin with a simple call. She had reflected that if she should go to dinner Mr. Wentworth and his daughters would also be asked, and it had seemed to her that the peculiar character of the occasion would be best preserved in a tete-a-tete with her host.
Why the occasion should have a peculiar character she explained to no one.
As far as any one could see, it was simply very pleasant.
Acton came for her and drove her to his door, an operation which was rapidly performed. His house the Baroness mentally pronounced a very good one; more articulately, she declared that it was enchanting.
It was large and square and painted brown; it stood in a well-kept shrubbery, and was approached, from the gate, by a short drive.
It was, moreover, a much more modern dwelling than Mr. Wentworth's, and was more redundantly upholstered and expensively ornamented.
The Baroness perceived that her entertainer had analyzed material comfort to a sufficiently fine point. And then he possessed the most delightful chinoiseries--trophies of his sojourn in the Celestial Empire: pagodas of ebony and cabinets of ivory; sculptured monsters, grinning and leering on chimney-pieces, in front of beautifully figured hand-screens; porcelain dinner-sets, gleaming behind the glass doors of mahogany buffets; large screens, in corners, covered with tense silk and embroidered with mandarins and dragons.
These things were scattered all over the house, and they gave Eugenia a pretext for a complete domiciliary visit.
She liked it, she enjoyed it; she thought it a very nice place.
It had a mixture of the homely and the liberal, and though it was almost a museum, the large, little-used rooms were as fresh and clean as a well-kept dairy. Lizzie Acton told her that she dusted all the pagodas and other curiosities every day with her own hands; and the Baroness answered that she was evidently a household fairy.
