Princess Zara

The courier at once sought the hotel office and registered as follows:

Her Highness Princess Zara de Echeveria

and suite, St. Petersburg.

And when his attention was called to the fact that the names of the

entire party were required, he shrugged his shoulders and announced: "I regret, sir, that I do not remember the names of all the persons who

comprise her highness' suite, but I will supply you presently with a

list of them."

In the parlor of the apartments occupied by the princess, her maid was

removing the furs and wraps and making her mistress comfortable, for

there is inevitably after a sea voyage, a few hours of fatigue which

nothing but restful quiet and utter idleness will overcome; and

therefore an hour or more later, when a visiting card was taken to the

princess she did not even give herself the trouble to examine it, but

said while she peered through half closed eyelids: "Whoever it is, Orloff, say that I will not receive until four this

afternoon."

Down below, in the office of the hotel, the gentleman who had sent up

the card and who received this message in reply to it, shrugged his

shoulders, glanced at the face of his watch to discover that it was yet

barely noon-time, crossed to the book stall where he secured something

to read and thereby while away the time, and then having sought a

comfortable chair in a secluded corner deposited himself in it with an

air of finality which indicated that he had no idea of departing from

the hotel until after he had secured the solicited audience.

At four he sent a second card to the princess; at half past four he was

admitted to her presence.

If the eyes of that curious throng of people who had watched her

arrival at the steamship pier could have seen her then, when this man

who had waited so long was shown into her presence, they would have

been amply repaid for their admiring curiosity concerning her. It is

trite to speak of a woman as being radiantly beautiful, commonplace to

refer to it at all, save by implication, since feminine beauty is a

composite attribute, vague and indefinable, and should possess no

single quality to individualize it. Beauty such as that possessed by

Princess Zara can neither be defined nor described. It is the tout

ensemble of her presence and her personal charm.

Zara de Echeveria needed no adornment to emphasize the attractions of

her gorgeous self. She was one of those rare women who are rendered

more attractive by the absence of all ornament and her dark eyes were

more luminous and brilliant than any jewel she might have worn. Her

gown, though rich, was simplicity itself, and inasmuch as her servants

had found time during the hours since their arrival, to decorate the

rooms according to the princess' tastes, she was surrounded by much the

same settings that would have been contained in her own palatial home

at St. Petersburg. When it is said that she was barely twenty-five in

years; that her father had been a Spanish nobleman in the diplomatic

service at the Russian capital, and that her mother was of royal birth,

we have an explanation for the exquisitely fascinating and almost

voluptuous qualities of her beauty, as well as for her royal manner of

command.