of Sir Edwin's brothers had been obliged, like all the second sons in wealthy British families, to go out in the world and earn his living. After a life of adventure, he had finally settled down in the United States, near the Mexican border, and had soon found himself, through a marriage with an heiress of the country, much richer than his elder brother.
His wife was a Mexican. She owned famous silver mines in the interior and vast ranches on the border. She had only one daughter; and the latter was in her eighth year when Arthur Macdonald died as a result of a fall from his horse. The widow, with her little Alicia, moved to Europe. She wanted to live in London, to be near her brother-in-law, Sir Edwin, then a member of Parliament, and much admired by the Mexican woman as one of the directors of the world's affairs. Later she established herself in Paris, as the capital most to her taste, and as the place where she could meet many people from Mexico.
The Princess Lubimoff treated her relative well, although her friendship suffered sudden changes, often going from extreme affection to sudden coldness.
She and Doña Mercedes could talk about mines and vast estates, although neither of them had any accurate knowledge of their respective fortunes. They estimated their wealth only by the enormous quantities of money – millions of francs a year – which their distant business agents sent them, and which they spent without knowing just how. There was another thing which attracted the Princess, in her moments of good will, to Doña Mercedes: she herself was blond, while the Spanish Creole still kept traces of Hispanic-Aztec beauty, with a dark, somewhat olive complexion, large, wide-open, almond eyes, and hair astonishing for its blackness, brilliancy, and length.
But an instinctive rivalry frequently embittered the relations of the two multi-millionaires. The Princess was sure that her own wealth was far the greater. When Doña Mercedes talked about Mexican silver, she mentioned Russian platinum! "What is silver worth compared to platinum!" And in order completely to floor her opponent, the Princess would bring out her family history. Beginning with the remote Cossack ancestor, who almost became the legitimate husband of Catherine the Great, she paraded before her Mexican rival generals, marshals of the Emperor's household, hetmans, followed by their retinues of half savage horsemen, princes and ambassadors. Sir Edwin's wife talked as though she belonged to the reigning house, letting it be understood that her famous ancestor had played a part in the establishing of one of the Czars. For this reason she had always been shown special consideration at court.
Doña Mercedes, inwardly jealous of so much greatness, nevertheless smiled a sweet enigmatic smile, as though she were to say, "That is all very far away – and perhaps a lie."
Then immediately she would begin talking in her rapid whimsical French, a French which she had never been able to free from numerous Spanish locutions that still clung tenaciously.
"Mama was an intimate friend of Eugenie… Don't you know who Eugenie is? The Empress, the wife of Napoleon III. When Madame Barrios – that was my mother's name – was announced at the Tuileries, the doors were opened wide. Papa was one of the men who made Maximilian emperor."
Over against the aristocratic grandeur of the Saint Petersburg court she set the image of the Mexican court, of the brief Empire which had ended in the execution of the Archduke Maximilian, and the madness of his bride, Carlotta. The Emperor endeavored to establish the musty old etiquette of the Austrian Court, but the Mexican matrons, when they called on the young Empress, said in the frank maternal fashion of the colonies: "How is everything, Carlotta?.. How do you like the country, my dear?"
Moved by a similar frankness, Doña Mercedes would end her discourse by saying carelessly:
"Papa, seeing that the Empire was going badly, recognized Juarez as the head of the government, and joined the side of the Republic. He did it to save our mines."
Then she would talk on for a long time about the Barrios, who, according to her, were descendants of the most ancient aristocracy of Spain. All the nobles of Madrid were therefore relatives of hers. Everybody knew that! As a child she had seen at home a lot of papers which proved her right to the title of Marchioness; but owing to the revolutions in her country, and her travels, she no longer knew where to find them.
If the Princess referred to the splendor of her palace, the Creole would immediately mention her elegant private mansion in the Champs Élysées. The arrival of Colonel Toledo, as a valorous adornment giving the princely residence military prestige, did not intimidate Doña Mercedes. She too had a Spaniard, an Aragonese cleric, who acted as a sort of royal private chaplain, and whom she considered a man of science, because, bored by his sinecure in her employ, he had taken up elementary astronomy, and had set up a telescope on the roof of her house.
Whenever the Mexican lady dared to imitate her entertainments, her carriages or her clothes, the Princess Lubimoff would audibly lament the fact that Paris was not in Russia, where she might call on the chief of police to force this low-bred Creole to show the respect due to her superiors. But after these bursts of anger she would feel a sudden wave of tenderness for Doña Mercedes. "In spite of your illiteracy," she would say, "you are a woman of natural talent and the only one with whom I can talk for an hour at a stretch."
Between these two declining beauties, who had seen themselves the center of attraction and adoration in former years, there was a common bond, something which moved them both like far off lovely music, like the cherished memory of youth: It was the daughter of Doña Mercedes, the vivacious Alicia Macdonald.
Doña Mercedes seemed to see her own beauty, renewed with fresh vigor, in her child. But in this she was mistaken. Alicia added to her dark southern splendor the slenderness and slightly boyish freedom of movement of her father's race. The Princess, observing the girl's independent character, thought she saw herself back once more in the days when she was beginning to shock the Imperial Court. This too was a mistake. She herself had been able to follow all her most wilful impulses, without fear of gossip. She possessed everything. Besides her immense wealth, she had the advantages of birth, enabling her to elevate any man whatsoever to her own level, no matter how far beneath her he might be. Alicia had one ambition; to unite her fortune with a great title of the old aristocracy in order to be presented at court. Since her fifteenth year this desire had been fixed, calculating design, dissimulated under apparent recklessness. From her fairy-story days, her mother had talked to her about wonderful marriages, and of princes who in former times used to marry shepherdesses, but who were in search nowadays of millionaires' daughters.
Michael Fedor felt somewhat embarrassed at meeting this girl in his palace. She looked at him so boldly, with such a dominating expression, as though everything and everyone should bow before her!
She had beauty of a type more fascinating than conventional. Her complexion, slightly tinged with a strange golden orange color, her large eyes a trifle slanting, her luxuriant hair, which, fleeing its bondage of hairpins, seemed alive and coiling like a cluster of snakes, gave her an exotic charm. The rest of her body revealed a modern physical education. Her limbs were firm and agile from continued exercise and play.
Doña Mercedes seemed to urge Alicia and Michael toward each other from the first meeting.
"Don't stand on formality," she said in a motherly way. "You are cousins."
Although Michael didn't succeed in making out this relationship, he endeavored to treat the young girl in a friendly manner, while the Creole mother smiled as she already pictured Alicia with the coronet of a princess, bowing before the Czar. Princess Lubimoff was in one of her kindly moods; for the moment she did not believe in caste and privileges, to the extent that she would again have given money to the long-haired individuals who used to visit her. She accepted her friend's ambitious projects tolerantly and without comment.
The Prince, meanwhile, was telling the Colonel his impressions.
"Too much of a young lady! I like the others better."
Don Marcos, having been Michael's companion in wide and joyous travels, knew whom the boy meant by "the others"; for Prince Lubimoff had begun very young to nibble at the grapes of life.
On other occasions it irritated him that, with her unabashed demeanor of a foolish virgin, she should seem so much like "the others."
"She's worse than a boy. If you only