"Ah," said the Marquise, looking up at him with a glance and a smile that set his pulses jumping, "then perhaps Sophie Valdemar was right when she told me this afternoon that His Excellency had really a good excuse for not coming--an interview with Count Lansdorf, and afterwards with no less a personage than the Little Father himself! And, you know, Sophie knows everything." "Ah yes," said the Prince; "I had forgotten that. You told me of it. I should not wonder if the subject of their conversation were not unconnected with an increase of the French fleet in Chinese waters. And then Morocco is----" "Chut, papa!" said the Marquise, in a low tone, "we must not talk politics here. In Petersburg ceilings have eyes and walls have ears." "That is true," laughed Victor; "not even Embassies here are neutral ground." At this moment a lacquey approached and bowed to Captain Fargeau. "Pardon me a moment," he said to his companions; "I am wanted for something, and I can see a good many envious eyes looking this way. Ah, there goes the music! They will be dancing presently, and there will be many candidates for Mam'selle's hand. But you will keep me a waltz or two, won't you? and may I hope also for supper?" "My dear Victor," she replied, with a bewildering smile, "have I not already told you that you may hope for everything? Meanwhile, _au revoir_! When you have done your business you will find us in the salon." As he moved away, the curtains were again drawn aside, and the major-domo announced: "His Excellency Count Valdemar! The Countess Sophie Valdemar!" The Count was a big, strongly-built man in diplomatic uniform. His face was of the higher Russian type, and heavily bearded. His daughter, the Countess Sophie, was a strange contrast to him, slight and fair, with perfectly cut features, almost Grecian in their regularity, golden-bronze hair, dark, straight eyebrows, and big, wide-set, pansy-blue eyes. The only Russian trait that she possessed was her mouth--full-lipped and sensuous, almost sensular, in fact; and yet it was small enough, and the lips were so daintily shaped that it added to, rather than detracted from her beauty. They were lips whose kisses had lured more than one bearer of a well-known name to destruction. Some they had sent to the scaffold, and others were still dreaming of their fatal sweetness in prison or in hopeless exile; for Sophie Valdemar, daughter of Count Leo Valdemar, Chief of the Third Section of the Ministry of the Interior, had been trained up from girlhood by her father in every art of intrigue, until even he was fully justified in calling her the most skilful diplomatic detective in Europe.