"Poor Ivor," she mused; "how very melodramatic, and how youthful! I must get you into better training, Ivor, or we shall have you really committing some foolish escapade, and mixing my name up in it, in a way I should not care for."
Then she turned from the window, and as she did so came her summons to the Empress, and hastening to obey the command she forgot Ivor entirely, or remembered him only to say half vexedly: "After all he told me nothing about Count Stevan's murder. Oh, tiresome Ivor!" And thus she dismissed him, and all other annoying subjects, with but scant courtesy.
CHAPTER XI.
A WOMAN SCORNED.
When Count Vladimir Mellikoff drew back the portières that shrouded the doors of the large drawing-room at the Folly, he came face to face with Miss Rosalie James, and for a full moment these two gazed at each other in a silence that might have been born either of unexpectedness, or preconcerted arrangement.
Count Mellikoff never allowed ordinary emotions to be visible in his face; he had that absolute control of feature and muscle which only long training and an inflexible will can effect. It is seldom one comes across such a countenance, over which no appreciable change ever passes, and upon which the passions leave no reflex, not even the slightest shadow, such as troubles a pool when a cloud passes overhead, that is gone even as one watches its approach. Such a countenance betokens one of two temperaments: a nature too weak and vacuous to feel or comprehend any master passion, and which from very inanition becomes irresponsive, or one so strong and so intense as to fear its own capabilities, and therefore strives to conceal all outward expression, lest its lightest emotion might exhibit something more than the usual conventionalities.
Of the latter type was Vladimir Mellikoff. From his boyhood he had taught himself the value of repression, and in it had found his greatest power. He had learned to so utterly subdue all outward expression of the passion that at the moment might be consuming him, as to remain absolutely passive under the most trying circumstances, and so to control his every feature, that not one muscle, not so much as the trembling of his lips or the lifting of his eyebrows, ever betrayed him, when it was his will that they should not.
And yet, perhaps, the greatest charm that he possessed was the sudden and unexpected brilliancy or softness which he at times allowed his countenance to assume; then all the harsh, decisive lines faded from about his mouth and eyes, the stern rigidity of chin and brow relaxed, the gravity of the dark eyes, in their deep settings, grew tender, and the expression of melancholy harshness melted beneath the sweetness of his smile.
Olga Naundorff, who knew him so well, had seen this change in him more often than any one, yet even to her it was always new and startling, and filled her with a certain feeling of amazement, not unmixed with pity. For to Olga, the beautiful, as to her Imperial ancestress, men and men's passions were but playthings of the hour, and should, like all mechanical toys, be perfectly regulated by ingenious clockwork, warranted never to get out of order, and never to carry their cleverness beyond certain boundaries. If any one of her puppets over-stepped these, and showed signs of unconventional or barbaric passion, she lifted her dark brows in astonishment, raised her proud head a trifle more haughtily, and with superb disdain reduced the poor bungler to his proper state of imbecility, and then passed him by ever after with an intensity of quiet scorn, that killed by slow but sure degrees.