“She is a very beautiful young lady,” said Emile with emphasis. Going towards the window, he observed, “I am surprised to see so much snow on the ground at this season. Does it always linger so long?” “No; this spring is an unusually late one,” Clémence answered mechanically, while her thoughts were busy with matters far more interesting. An electric flash passed through her mind, linking together scattered hints, and transient, half-suppressed allusions. The boyish quarrels of Emile with clever little Stéphanie used to be the amusement of the household; and that a serious attachment had sprung out of them was not by any means improbable. A genuine compassion for her cousin awoke within her.--And Henri? So far as he was concerned, surprise as yet swallowed up every other feeling. “Ah!” cried Emile with a brightening face, “here is Prince Ivan alighting from his drosky. I will go and meet him;” and he hastened from the room. Emile was not demonstrative; but a warm and genuine friendship for Ivan had a place in his heart since the day when the young Russian answered his scoffs with generous words of counsel and expostulation. Ivan’s advice and influence had saved him from much evil, and Ivan’s character had unconsciously become his model of excellence. But they had scarcely exchanged salutations when several guests came in also to share the family dinner. It was the habit of the “grands seigneurs” of St. Petersburg to hoist a flag over their palaces when they intended dining at home, as a sign that their friends would be welcome to join them; and Ivan adopted the hospitable customs of his class, while he avoided much of its lavish and ostentatious expenditure. His guests however departed early, as most of them were going to a ball at Gateschina, the residence of the Empress Mother; and after a whispered word to Clémence he said to Emile, “No doubt you smoke, as of old? I have a smoking-room for my friends, though I am not myself a votary of the fragrant weed. Come with me.” Emile was soon stretched at full length on a velvet-covered divan, and accommodated with a long amber-tipped pipe filled with the choicest tobacco. Ivan seated himself by the fire, and the friends talked together of many things; nor was their communion hindered by the fact that each had a secret care in his heart. Some things were said, or hinted, by Emile which Ivan rejoiced to hear. It soon became evident that the man was not the scoffing sceptic the lad had been: Ivan’s words of counsel had gone home to his heart and been the means of keeping him from those “paths of the destroyer” into which there was once terrible danger his feet might wander. After many other subjects had been discussed, Emile observed, “I am curious to know what you have been doing with the Army of Occupation, since its return from France.”[80]