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Nicolas and Natacha, his son and daughter, often found their father and mother in anxious consultation, talking in low tones of the sale of their Moscow house or of their property in the neighborhood. Having thus retired into private life, the count now gave neither fêtes nor entertainments.
In the front line of the crowd that waited to see Annouchka come out he recognized Natacha, with her head enveloped in the black mantle so that none should see her face. Besides, this corner of the garden was in a half-gloom. The police barred the way; he could not approach as near Natacha as he wished. He set himself to slip like a serpent through the crowd.
But Michael, he has a heart of stone; he knows nothing but the countersign and massacres fathers and mothers, crying, 'Vive le Tsar! Truly, it seems his heart can only be touched by the sight of Natacha. And that again has caused a good deal of anxiety to Feodor and me. It has caught us in a useless complication that we would have liked to end by the prompt marriage of Natacha and Boris.
"And if the man is not dead," replied Feodor, who visibly held onto himself, "if that man, whom you helped to enter my house this night, has succeeded in escaping, as you seem to hope, will you tell us his name?" "I could not tell it, Father." "And if I prayed you to do so?" Natacha desperately shook her head. "And if I order you?" "You can kill me, Father, but I will not pronounce that name."
Once she turned her head slightly toward Rouletabille. The reporter then looked towards her with increased eagerness, his eyes burning, as though he would say: "Surely, Natacha, you are not the accomplice of your father's assassins; surely it was not you who poured the poison!" But Natacha's glance passed the reporter coldly over.
He knows them by heart, they are in his brain and on his tongue all night long, in spite of narcotics, and he says over and over again all the time, 'It is my daughter who has written that! my daughter! my daughter! It is enough to wring all the tears from one's body that an aide-de-camp of a general, who himself has killed the youth of Moscow, is allowed to write such verses and that Natacha should take it upon herself to translate them into lovely poetic French for her album.
A quarter of an hour later he gave a true Russian nobleman's fist-blow in the back to the coachman as an intimation that they had reached the Trebassof villa. A charming picture was before him. They were all lunching gayly in the garden, around the table in the summer-house. He was astonished, however, at not seeing Natacha with them. Boris Mourazoff and Michael Korsakoff were there.
He ordered his daughter to tell everything, everything. Natacha fixed Koupriane again with her look of hatred to the death, turned from him and repeated in a firm voice: "I have nothing to say." "There is the accomplice of your assassins," growled Koupriane then, his arm extended. Natacha uttered a cry like a wounded beast and fell at her father's feet.
Michael and Natacha, in a corner, were deep in conversation, and Boris watched them with obvious impatience, still strumming the guzla. But the thing that struck Rouletabille's youthful imagination beyond all else was the mild face of the general. He had not imagined the terrible Trebassof with so paternal and sympathetic an expression.
"My, what a country!" he murmured. But his thoughts soon quit Annouchka and returned to the object of his main preoccupation. He waited for only one thing, and for that as soon as possible to have a private interview with Natacha. He had written her ten letters in two days, but they all remained unanswered.
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