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At this moment the door opened again and Catrina came in. In her rich furs she looked almost pretty. She shook hands eagerly with Steinmetz; her deep eyes searched his face with a singular, breathless scrutiny. "Where are you from?" she asked quickly. "London." "Catrina," broke in the countess, "you do not remember M. de Chauxville! He nursed you when you were a child."
"The Count Lanovitch," pursued De Chauxville, "where is he?" "Banished for his connection with the Charity League." "Catrina?" "Catrina is living in the province of Tver we are neighbors she and her mother, the countess." De Chauxville nodded. None of the details really interested him. His indifference was obvious. "Ah! the Countess Lanovitch," he said reflectively, "she was a foolish woman."
The stableman, seeing the direction of his gaze, began to talk of the weather and the possibilities of snow in the near future. They conversed in low voices together. Presently the door opened and Catrina came quickly out, followed by a servant carrying a small hand-bag. Paul could not see Catrina's face. She was veiled and furred to the eyelids.
I have much to ask and to tell you. I want you to see Catrina and to tell her that I am safe and well, but she must not attempt to see me or correspond with me for some years yet. Of course you heard no account of my trial. I was convicted, on the evidence of paid witnesses, of inciting to rebellion. It was easy enough, of course. I shall live either in the south or in Austria.
Her friendship once secured was a thing worth possessing. She was inclined to bestow it upon this quiet, self-contained English girl. In such matters the length of an acquaintance goes for nothing. A long acquaintanceship does not necessarily mean friendship one being the result of circumstance, the other of selection. "The princess knows Russian?" said Catrina suddenly.
"Oh, not very much!" answered De Chauxville a cautious man, who knew a woman's humor. Catrina driving a pair of ponies in the clear, sharp air of Central Russia, and Catrina playing the piano in the enervating, flower-scented atmosphere of a drawing-room, were two different women. De Chauxville was not the man to mistake the one for the other. "Not very much, mademoiselle," he answered.
Catrina a second Eve glanced at him, and her silence gave him permission to go on. "Some men have a different code of honor for women, who are helpless." Catrina knew vaguely that unless a woman is beloved by the object of her displeasure, she cannot easily make him suffer. She clenched her teeth over her lower lip. As she played, a new light was dawning in her eyes.
She settled Karl Steinmetz's account with a sniff of contempt. "And that is why you have been so fond of Osterno the last two years?" she asked innocently. "Yes," he answered, falling into the trap. Catrina winced. One does not wince the less because the pain is expected.
"We have quite a number of them in the forests at Thors." "Ah, Mme. la Comtesse," he answered, with outspread, deprecatory hands, "but that would be taking too great an advantage of your hospitality and your well-known kindness." He turned to Catrina, who received him with a half-concealed frown.
She was probably regretting her former kindness of manner. Catrina had come too near. "Are you not judging rather hastily?" suggested Maggie, in a measured voice which heightened the contrast between the two. "I find it takes some time to discover whether one likes or dislikes new acquaintances." "Yes; but you English are so cold and deliberate. You do not know what it is to hate or to care."
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