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She had probably been acquainted with Princess Boriskoff, I said to myself, or she would not be talking of her now, with bated breath, as a "poor thing." Evidently the lady had been waiting for the lift to come down, for when my guide rang and it descended she took a step forward, giving a friendly little nod to her companion, and saying, "Well, I must go. I feel sure it's true about her."
A certain grace of girlhood attended this apparition; the dress was rich and costly and exquisitely made; but that which held Alban's closer attention was the fact that the wearer of it unquestionably was a Pole, and not unlike little Lois Boriskoff herself. He would not say, indeed, that the resemblance was striking it might have been merely that of nationality.
This was the sentiment immediately expressed by a lank-haired Pole who followed the speaker. Let Paul Boriskoff write out his case and the Committee would consider it, he said. If Maxim Gogol were adjudged guilty, let him be punished. For himself he would spare neither man, woman, or child sheltered in the house of the oppressor. A story had been told to them of an unusual order.
But he found it impossible to open his heart to an alien, nor did he believe Paul Boriskoff capable of appreciating the emotions which now tortured him. "I have never been ashamed of any of my friends," he exclaimed hotly; "you know that it is not true, Paul Boriskoff. Where are the letters which I wrote to Lois? Why has she not answered them? If I had been ashamed, would they have been written?
I laid the bursting sun on the table, and told them everything, very fast, without pausing to take breath, so that they wouldn't have time to stop me. But I didn't begin with the bursting sun, or even with the beating that Bertie was enjoying in the woods; I began with the Princess Boriskoff, and Lady Kilmarny; and I addressed Sir Samuel, from beginning to end.
The chosen hand would strike him down when his hour had come even if it were not the hand of the man he had wronged. In so far as Boriskoff betrayed intense emotion before them, it may be that they despised him. What nation had been made free by tears? How would weeping put bread into the children's mouths?
This he protested with a humility quite foreign to him and an earnestness which revealed the depth of the indignity he suffered; but Boriskoff remained inflexible. "I am determined upon it," was the harsh retort; "the boy shall be as a link between us. Keep him from this hell in which he has lived and I will set so much to your credit. I warn you that you have a difficult task.
This he imagined to be quite possible. "They are great as a nation," he thought, "but most of them are mad. I will tell Lois to-morrow that I have seen her sister in St. James' Square. I shouldn't wonder if she knew all about this house and the party and Boriskoff will, if she doesn't."
Here, as in London, that pleasant person Count Sergius Zamoyski reminded him how considerable was the service he could confer, not alone upon his patron but upon the friends of his evil days. "It has all been a mistake," the Count would say with fine protestation of regret; "my Government arrested that poor old fellow Boriskoff, but it would gladly let him go.
If he remembered that he had likened her to little Lois Boriskoff, he could now admit the preposterous nature of the comparison. True it was that nationality spoke in the contour of the face, in its coloring and its expression, but these elementals were forgotten in the amazing grace of the girl's movements, the dignity of her gestures and the vitality which animated her.
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