He held out the flower, smiling as he did so, and she took it mechanically, and fastened it amidst the black laces that draped her shoulders and bosom; it dropped its golden head lovingly upon them, while its perfume rose and fell with the pulsations of her heart.
Vladimir drew a chair opposite to her and sat down, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and his keen eyes noting each fluctuating expression of her face, each flutter of the laces above her unquiet breast, each nervous movement of her hands in their long, loose Suède coverings. He had a dangerous game to play, and upon his success or defeat depended his winning or losing Olga. As her name crossed his mind, though not spoken by his lips, he was shaken by a sudden passion of love and desire; he recalled her proud, pale beauty, the blue of her eyes, "blue as the violets of his own Novgorod," the golden sheen of her hair, her lissom figure, and her cold haughty smile.
He would win her, or he would die; and what mattered any other woman's life if he could but appear worthy in her eyes? What had the chief said? "You must use a woman's weapons—finesse, deceit, distrust—when you make war upon a woman." Well, and so he would; it should go hard with him if he could not fit himself out in a woman's armour, and not reveal where the breast-plate failed to meet, or the helmet bound his forehead too tightly. One must put up with such little inconveniences when one adapts oneself to the warfare of the weaker sex.
"Above all, distrust the women of the great world, they are our cleverest enemies;" that had been another of Patouchki's axioms; and he did distrust this pale, dark-eyed, slight American girl with every fibre of his mind, and read her through and through; her shallow cleverness, her dwarfed ambitions, her stunted love, that was not so much love as a mixture of baffled pride and jealousy, and desire of conquest. She could be useful to him; he had decided that within the dinner-hour, when he caught her suspicious glances, cast first at Philip Tremain, as he sat on Mrs. Newbold's left, and then at Miss Hildreth, who, radiant and handsome, was eating olives, and mystifying George Newbold, on whose right hand she was placed. He had read Miss James's secret then and there, and resolved that it should be useful to him, and that she should be the tool in his master-hand wherewith to work.
Rosalie in due course had been presented to him, and she had not failed to notice and feel flattered by his attentions to her. She was smarting under Mr. Tremain's too apparent indifference, and Patricia's too evident power. She longed to strike both the one and the other, to tear off the masks from their serenely smiling faces, and hold them up to the scorn and derision of their world.
"I hate them both," she murmured between her teeth. "I hate him because he loves her still, and I hate her because she is so beautiful and so victorious. I know there is some secret well hidden behind that lovely face, and oh, what would I not give to find it out and reveal it!"
It was at this moment that George Newbold's lazy voice interrupted her thoughts, and looking up she saw him leaning towards her with the distinguished appearing foreigner beside him. Mr. Newbold mumbled out two names and left them, and Rosalie glancing up again met the Count's steady dark eyes fixed upon her, and knew with sudden certainty that he had read her face only too well; how much more that lay beneath the surface of her outward seeming not even she could tell!
They stood quite silent for several moments, and during that time she felt imperceptibly at first, and then more and more certainly, his influence and power growing upon her; she acknowledged the intensity of his glance without daring to meet it, and could have cried for rage at her own inability to throw off the fascination he exercised over her. When he spoke it was upon a commonplace topic, and she drew a sigh of relief when, after a brief conversation, he bowed and left her, even though conscious of a vague regret that he should go from her.
During the evening she had many times felt his eyes seek her out and rest for a moment on her face, and at each such occurrence the blood had rushed to her cheeks, and she had trembled, though not with cold. He had stood a long time talking with Mr. Tremain, and she had watched them with a half-formed anticipation of some coming and unexpected catastrophe, and then, when she turned and sought to leave the room, she heard a quiet voice say, "Permit me," the door was opened for her, and as she expressed her thanks Count Vladimir bowed, and returned to his place beside Philip. And now they were once more together and alone, and she was again conscious of an ever-increasing apprehension; the prescience of some coming evil in which they were both to bear a part, and yet which she was powerless to avert.
"Mademoiselle," said Count Vladimir, bending a little more forward and looking up at her from under his dark brows, "I am about to do something which under ordinary circumstances and with an ordinary audience would be considered not only indiscreet but unconventional. If I misjudge my opportunity and my audience and offend you by putting you outside the pale of weak worshippers of conventional cult, pray say so at once, and I will humbly beg your pardon and withdraw."