ery
gesture.

Sitting next to him was the Countess Olisco, the Russian whom Nina had
noted and admired at her aunt's ball. As there were but nine at dinner,
and the conversation was general, Nina had time to observe closely her
appearance. She had the broad Russian brow, the Egyptian eyes and
unbroken bridge of the nose. She was the most slender woman imaginable,
and her slenderness was exaggerated by the fashion of wearing her hair
piled up so high and so far forward that at a distance it might be taken
for a small black fur toque tipped over her nose. She rarely wore
colors, but to-night, because of the etiquette against wearing black at
court, her long-trained dress was of sapphire blue velvet, as severe and
as clinging as possible.

Nina divined better than she knew, when she put the little Russian and
Carpazzi in the same category. Fundamentally they were much the same,
but whereas he was always bursting into flame, the contessa suggested a
well banked fire that burned continually, but within destroyed itself
rather than others. Thin, white, and self-consuming, she was like the
small Russian cigarettes that were never out of her lips. Fragile as she
looked, she had a will that brooked no obstacle, an energy that knew no
fatigue.

Aside from her appearance, the story that Giovanni had related of the
contessa's marriage was in itself enough to arouse the interest of any
girl alive to romance. According to him, she was the daughter of a
Russian nobleman of great family and wealth. The Count Olisco (a
mild-eyed Italian boy, he looked) had been attached to the legation at
St. Petersburg. Zoya was only sixteen years old when she announced her
intention of marrying him. Her father, furious that the Italian had
dared approach his daughter, demanded his recall, whereupon she told him
the astonishing news that Olisco had never, to her knowledge, even seen
her. But she declared that if her father did not marry her to him, she
would kill herself.

She did take poison but, being saved by the doctors, who discovered it
through her maid, she sent the same maid to tell the Count Olisco the
whole story. The romance of her act, coupled with her beauty and her
birth, naturally so flattered the young Italian that he offered himself
as a suitor, and, her father relenting, they were married.

Nina was left for some time to her own thoughts, as her Italian (not
particularly fluent at best) was altogether lacking in idiom, and she