"We will pass over the events of the next few years. It would hardly
interest you to follow, as I did, each step by which the heroine of my
history progressed ever downward on the path of vice. We find her at last
traveling in Italy under the protection of the Count von Erlenstein, an
Austrian noble of great wealth and dissolute character. She has cast aside
the name she once bore, and, anticipating the jewel-borrowed cognomens of
Cora Pearl and La Reine Topaze, she adopts a title from the profusion of
pink coral jewelry which she habitually wears, and Rose Sherbrooke is
known as Rose Coral."
Horace paused. A short, sharp sound broke the momentary silence: it was
caused by the snapping of one of the gilded fan-sticks under the pressure
of the white, rigid fingers that clasped it. But the listener kept her
face hidden, and but for that convulsive motion the speaker might have
fancied that she slept, so silent and motionless did she remain. After a
short pause Horace continued:
"The attachment of Count von Erlenstein proved to be a lasting one, and we
find Rose Coral at a later period installed in a luxurious establishment
in Vienna, and one of the reigning queens of that realm of many
sovereigns, the _demi-monde_ of the gay capital of Austria. But the count
falls ill; his sickness speedily assumes a dangerous form; his death
deprives Rose Coral of her splendor; and the sunny streets of Vienna know
her fair face no more.
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