"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."