The Intriguers

The beautiful Spanish woman blushed ever so slightly. “Ah, Signor, he comes because I am the fashion. But all the same, I wish you would not go.”

Her manner was very insistent. Nello could see that she was greatly agitated.

“Tell me, Madame. You have some reason for not wishing me to go?”

Madame Quéro hesitated. She dared not tell the truth, that she feared there was some sinister design on the part of the Prince. Had he not said that Corsini must disappear? Her blood ran cold at the thought.

She relied on her woman’s wiles. “Suppose,” she whispered softly, “that I told you I was very jealous of the Princess Nada. Would that keep you away?”

Nello looked at her steadily. A few days ago her request might have had some influence on him, but now he knew her for a traitress. She was only seeking to trap him for her own ends. He was proof against her. Golitzine had warned him.

“The Princess Nada is an old friend of mine, Madame. I have promised to play that little romance for her whenever she wishes to hear it. I cannot break my promise.”

The blood of the Biscayan peasant surged wildly in her veins. “You are a fool, Signor Corsini; you do not know your real friends, I assure you.”

Corsini assumed his most diplomatic manner. He bowed profoundly. “I have made many friends in St. Petersburg, Madame, but I shall always remember that you were one of the first and best.”

“Always excepting Princess Nada,” remarked the prima donna spitefully.

“Ah, Madame, I met her first in London; I cannot tell you under what tragic circumstances. Yes, to be quite frank, the Princess has a little niche in my memory that nobody else can occupy. You will forgive me?”

Madame Quéro turned away from him scornfully, her warm Spanish blood all aflame at the mention of her rival.

“Go then to your beautiful Princess, with her bloom of the lilies and roses on her cheeks, and your fate be on your own head.”

Corsini, in spite of his equable temperament, was a little disturbed by the interview. Madame Quéro had been very insistent that he should not go to the Zouroff Palace. What was there behind this insistence?

He had pressed her closely as to her reasons, and she had led him to understand she entertained an undefined jealousy of the Princess Nada. In all probability that was the true explanation. Anyway, she would give him none other.

He was very busy during the next day or two with the cares of management – the directorship of the Imperial Opera was no light task. He met the singer several times, but she still appeared to nourish resentment.

Well, he could not help it. Wild horses would not have kept him away from the Zouroff Palace, from the few minutes’ glimpse of the beautiful young Princess. The Thursday drew near, and his pulses beat with pleasurable anticipation. If Madame Quéro withdrew her friendship from him, it would not break his heart; and if she was the traitress that Golitzine assumed, her friendship was not worth having.

As for the woman herself, she was torn with conflicting emotions. At one moment she hated him, at another she wept to think that he should fall a victim to the machinations of the unscrupulous and unrelenting Prince. And on the Wednesday, the day before the reception at the Zouroff Palace, her softer feelings conquered.

She had seen the Prince the night before, and he had told her that he was going into the country and would not return to St. Petersburg till the midday of the Thursday.

She drove to the Zouroff Palace in the afternoon and sent up her card to the Princess Nada. On it she had pencilled – “To see you on an urgent matter.”

The young Princess’s maid, Katerina, who was devoted to her mistress, brought in the card.

Nada read it, and she frowned. She was not at all conventional for a girl of her rank and station, and she numbered many artists amongst her friends. But she had heard of the reputation of La Belle Quéro. Rumours had reached her of the peculiar relations between the singer and her brother, the Prince. Obviously, she was not the sort of woman she could receive in a private capacity.

“Go down yourself, Katerina, to this person, and be perfectly civil,” she enjoined her maid. “Explain to her as politely as possible that I am not able to see any visitors to-day.”

The young woman conveyed the cold, decisive message to the waiting Madame Quéro. A dull, red flush spread over the singer’s face as she recognised the reasons for the refusal to accord her an interview.

But she had not come unprepared for such a rebuff. “One moment, if you please,” she said, drawing forth a letter and handing it to the maid. “Take this to your young mistress. I will wait till you return. I fancy next time you will bring me a different answer.”

The maid bowed and went back to the Princess. Nada tore the letter open angrily. The woman was a trifle too insolent and persistent. Then her angry mood passed as she mastered the brief contents.

“I regret very much to intrude upon you; I can quite guess that my presence is not welcome. A great danger is threatening a certain gentleman, Signor Corsini, for whom I believe you have some friendship. You are the only person I can think of at the moment who can avert that danger, especially as it is threatened by a member of your own family. If you still persist in refusing to see me, please seal up this letter and return it by your maid.”

There was no longer any fear of refusal. Corsini threatened with danger, and by a member of her own family, who could be none other than Boris!

“Bring the lady to me at once, Katerina,” she commanded the wondering maid.

A moment later the two faced each other, the Princess standing in the middle of the room, courteous but distantly polite, to receive her unwelcome guest.

They looked at each other steadily, with dislike in their hearts, the aristocrat of pure and ancient lineage, the woman who had played barefoot in the gutter as a child, and won her way with her exquisite talent to fame and fortune.

There was between them, at the start, the antagonism of class. But there was also between them a still more subtle antagonism, recognised by each: they had a mutual tenderness for the same man.

CHAPTER XIV

It was exceedingly difficult for a person of Nada’s frank and open temperament to resort to the arts of the dissembler, to feign a cordiality she did not feel. Still, she managed to pull herself together and, to a creditable extent, conceal her dislike of her unwelcome visitor. With a grave courtesy she invited the Spanish woman to seat herself.

“Your note has distressed me, Madame, for more than one reason. In the first place I am very sorry to hear that Signor Corsini is menaced by a great danger. I met him in London; ours was the first private house he played at after his great success at the Covent Garden concert. I have a great esteem for him as an artist, and I am shocked to think that, after so short a stay in my own country, he should be the victim of some sinister designs. Secondly, I am the more disturbed because your letter tells me very plainly in what quarter these designs are being entertained.”

Madame Quéro spoke very quietly. The Princess disliked her, of that she was assured, and she returned the dislike with compound interest. Still Nada was doing her best to be civil and polite. It should not be her fault if the interview was not conducted with perfect discretion on both sides.

“If the danger had not been very great and also very imminent, Princess, I should not have taken the liberty of intruding myself upon you. We move in different worlds, it is true, but I am some sort of a personage in my own sphere and not fond of exposing myself to rebuffs at the hand of a waiting-maid.”

Nada blushed at the shrewd, quick thrust, although the words were spoken without the least heat.

“I am very sorry you should have felt offended,” she faltered. “But of course, I could not deliver the message myself.”

Madame Quéro dismissed the subject with a graceful wave of the hand. If Nada had the composure of the aristocrat, she had the self-possession of the woman of the world. She could skate over thin ice as delicately as anybody.

“I have every reason to know that your brother, Prince Boris, has taken a violent enmity to this young musician.”

“My brother, I regret to say, takes violent dislikes to many people, for reasons that I have never been able to fathom. But I cannot guess any motive for enmity against Signor Corsini. In what possible way can their paths cross?”

“You will, of course, understand, Princess, that I cannot, in every instance, speak as plainly as I could wish. You may have heard, it is hardly possible you should not, that for some few years past Prince Zouroff has been one of my most intimate friends.”

Nada bowed her graceful head, while a faint flush rose to the fair cheek. Of course it was common rumour in St. Petersburg that he was greatly attracted by the handsome singer and was prepared to marry her, if her husband could be got out of the way. Such an alliance would not, naturally, recommend itself to the other members of the proud and ancient house of Zouroff.

“It would certainly seem a strange thing that their paths should cross in any way,” was Madame Quéro’s answer. “And here, I am afraid, I dare not be as explicit as I wish. You must forgive me, Princess, if I content myself with hints instead of full explanations. I can only just tell you this: Signor Corsini has discovered a jealously guarded secret of your brother’s. Your brother, therefore, regards him as a dangerous man, to be got out of his way.”

Nada’s face went pale as she listened to these rather vague utterances. Although so young, with a disposition naturally frank and trusting, she had a very quick intelligence. She thought she could read between the lines. It was some time before she spoke.

“My brother has a jealously guarded secret which Signor Corsini has discovered,” she repeated slowly. “If he revealed that secret, it would mean danger to Boris?”

Madame Quéro bowed. “At present his knowledge is not very great, but if he learnt more, it would mean the greatest possible danger to your brother.”

There was no mistaking the sinister meaning behind these words. The young girl reflected a few moments. Not once, but many times, some unguarded phrase of the Prince, dropped in one of his frequent rages, had set her thinking.

“Boris is not, then, exactly what he seems, Madame?”