"Lady Usk is very soon satisfied," she replies, coldly. "Her own amiability makes her see perfection everywhere." "It is a quality we cannot value too highly in so imperfect a world. It is better than seeing everything _en noir_, surely?" says Brandolin. "If we make people what we think them, as optimists say, it is best to be optimistic." "I dislike optimism," she says, curtly. "It is absurd and untrue. Our Dostoievsky is a wiser novelist than your Dickens. One must believe something," she says. "It is pretty for a woman to think so," says Brandolin, "but myself I have never seen why. I may hope, I may wish, I may regret, I may--if I am very sanguine--even expect; but believe--no!" "Perhaps I should like to believe in a woman," he adds, more softly, with that inflection of his voice which has always had at all events the effect of making women believe in him. Madame Sabaroff is not so easily touched as many. She pauses a moment, then says, with a certain weariness, "Anybody who can believe can love: that is nothing new." "What would be new? To love and disbelieve in what we love? It would be very painful." "It would be a test," says his companion. Then she drops the subject decidedly, by approaching the other ladies. Brandolin has a faint sense of discomfiture and sadness: he is accustomed to very facile conquests; and yet he is not a coxcomb, like Lawrence Hamilton; he did not precisely anticipate one here, but habit is second nature, and it has been his habit to succeed with women with rapidity and ease. That sense of mystery which there is also for him in the Princess Xenia oppresses whilst it allures him. He is English enough to think that he dislikes mystery, yet as an element of romance it has always an irresistible fascination for romantic temperaments. Gervase meanwhile has sunk into a chair by the side of Nina Curzon, and is saying, in a whisper, "Who is that lady? The one with her back to us, to whom Lord Brandolin is so _empressé_? I thought that I knew all the Usks' people." "Look in your Russian memories, and you will probably find that you know her too," replies Mrs. Curzon. "Oh, she is Russian?" says Gervase, then adds, negligently, "I think, now you tell me that, I have seen her before. Is she not the Princess Sabaroff?" "Why did you pretend not to know her?" thinks Nina Curzon as she answers, "Yes, that is her name. You must have met her in Petersburg." "Petersburg is very dim in my memories," he replies, evasively. "Its baccarat is what made the deepest impression on my remembrance and my fortunes. Now I think of it, however, I recollect her quite well: her husband was Anatole Sabaroff, and Lustoff shot him in a duel about her? Am I right?" "So charming for her!" says Nina Curzon. "Englishwomen never have anything happen for them picturesque like that: our men always die of indigestion, or going after a fox." "It is very curious." "What is? Dyspepsia? Hunting?" "How one comes across people."