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Updated: May 31, 2025
It's all on the outside. I went around on Essex and proposed marriage to that Catrina that's got the fruit shop there. Now, that business could be built up. She's a peach as far as a Dago could be. I thought I had that senoreena mashed sure last week. But look what she done to me! I guess I got too fresh. Well there's another scheme queered."
"I do not think you can say that, dear," sighed the countess, more in sorrow than in anger. "A clever one," answered Catrina. "There is a difference. The clever ones are the worst." The countess shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, and Catrina left the room. She went upstairs to her own little den, where the piano stood.
"Saw through my disguise." "Yes she would do that!" said Etta aloud to herself. "What is this door?" she asked, after a pause. "It leads to an inner room," replied Paul, "where Steinmetz usually works." He passed in front of her and opened the door. As he was doing so Etta went on in the train of her thoughts: "So Catrina knows?" "Yes." "And no one else?"
"Mme. la Comtesse," she said, with her most gracious smile, taking the limp hand offered to her by the Countess Lanovitch. Catrina stood in the embrasure of the window, hating her. Paul followed on his wife's heels, scarcely concealing his boredom. He was not a society man.
As for me," he paused and shrugged his great shoulders, "it means Siberia. Already I am a suspect a persona non grata." "I do not see how we can refuse to help Catrina," said Paul, in a voice which Steinmetz seemed to know, for he suddenly gave in. "As you will," he said. He sat up, and, drawing a small table toward him, took up a pen reflectively. Paul watched him in silence.
He leaned back, and when at length he spoke it was to give utterance to the trite commonplace of which he made a conversational study. A week later Catrina, watching from the window of her own small room, saw Paul lift Etta from the sleigh, and the sight made her clench her hands until the knuckles shone like polished ivory. She turned and looked at herself in the mirror.
The light was evidently that of an ordinary hand-lantern, and from the swinging motion it was easy to divine that it was being carried by some one who was walking quickly. "Who is this?" asked Steinmetz. "It is likely to be the Countess Catrina, Excellency." Steinmetz glanced back into the cottage, which was dark save for the light of a single petroleum lamp.
When De Chauxville came in, a few minutes later, Catrina was at the piano. The room was brilliantly lighted, and on the table gleamed and glittered the silver tea-things. The intermediate meal had been disposed of, but the samovar had been left alight, as is the habit at Russian afternoon teas. Catrina looked up when the Frenchman entered, but did not cease playing.
"I was just telling mademoiselle," said Maggie, speaking French with an honest English accent. Paul nodded, and left them together. "Yes," the countess was saying at the other end of the gloomy room; "yes, we are greatly attached to Thors: Catrina, perhaps, more than I. I have some happy associations, and many sorrowful ones. But then mon Dieu! how isolated we are!"
Catrina had turned upon her companion fiercely. Maggie swung round in her chair to pick up her bracelets, which had slipped from her knees to the floor. "You exaggerate things," she said quietly. "I see no reason to suppose that Paul is unhappy. It is because you have taken this unreasoning dislike to her." She took a long time to collect three bracelets.
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