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On the same afternoon that Nona and Barbara read the news of Sonya Valesky's sentence, Mildred Thornton came to Petrograd. Her return was characteristic of Mildred. It was a little past twilight and Nona and Barbara were in their shabby sitting room; they now shared the same bedroom in the new lodgings. Nona had been crying, and in order to try and make her forget, Barbara was reading aloud.
Of all incredible things, Nona! She stopped the cab and he hurried after it. "Nona!" "Marko!" She said, "I'm hurrying to Euston to catch a train. Tony's mother is with me." He could not see her well in the dim light, but he thought she looked terribly pale and fatigued. And her manner odd. He said, "I'm just going back. But you, Nona? I thought you were in France?" "I was this morning.
Just when she was well enough to walk alone and firmly came a sharp spell of cold, as unseasonable as had been the heat. It began about noon, one clear day, with a high wind. By sunset everything was frozen. Nona said: "You two have had more than your share of sleeping on the earth floor by the fire. My bed will hold me and my girls, for a few nights. You two take their bed.
"You might think it's her figure the way she hides it up under all those furs on a day like this. But a pug's figure " Nona broke in. "I suppose we're going to start some time?" "Will you come and sit here?" Puggo inquired, but without making any movement. "No, I'll sit behind." She got in. "Good-by, Marko." Her voice sounded tired. She gave Sabre her hand. "Jolly, the books," she said.
"Goodness, Mildred Thornton, what an experience you have been through!" Nona ejaculated. "Yet you talk as quietly as if it were almost an ordinary occurrence!" Mildred shook her head. "It is not because I feel it an ordinary experience, Nona, but because so much has happened I am overpowered by the bigness of it.
Yet Nona did not open it all that day or the morning of the next as she had a premonition that the letter was not an ordinary one. Either Madame Valesky was confiding her own history, or she was insisting upon proving to the American girl that she had at one time been a friend of her mother's. Really, it was this information that Nona both expected and feared.
The rest is a history which all men know: how the next Pope was just, and put the Carafa to their trial for many deeds of bloodshed; how the judgment was long delayed that it might be without flaw; how it took eight hours at last to read the judges' summing up; and how Cardinal Carafa was strangled by night in Sant' Angelo, while at the same hour his brother and the two who had murdered his wife were beheaded in Tor di Nona, just opposite the Castle, across the Tiber a grim tragedy, but the tragedy of justice.
For an instant Nona thought she saw a shade of anxiety cross the faces of her three companions, but the next instant it was gone. Nona could scarcely swallow a gasp of surprised admiration when, soon after, the door opened. A young Russian soldier entered the room. He wore the uniform of a Cossack: the high boots, the fur cap and tunic.
Automatically Nona Davis repeated the name of her new acquaintance. "Orlaff." The name was the same as her mother's. Was there a chance that the young Russian lieutenant might be a possible connection? However, the girl recognized that she was stupid to continue to ask herself questions.
The spectators looked up at Nona's call; Lord Tybar ceased the handle and looked up with his engaging smile; the uncommonly pretty woman removed her fingers from her ears and also turned upwards her uncommonly pretty face. "Hullo!" called Lord Tybar. "Did you happen to hear my sighs?" "That appalling noise!" said Nona. "You ought to be prosecuted!"
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