It was late that night before Miss James sought her own room; as she passed out of the drawing-room Count Vladimir held back the heavy portières with respectful attention, bending his head in salutation as she went by him.
Behind her, on the velvet carpet, lay the strewn petals of a golden-hued rose, about whose torn beauty a subtle fragrance still lingered, and the broken pearl sticks of a marquise feather fan.
CHAPTER XII.
A PINK BILLET-DOUX.
Mr. Tremain had allowed George Newbold to take him away from Count Mellikoff without any great regret on his part. He acknowledged himself interested in the man and in his conversation, and at first as he listened had almost persuaded himself that his instinctive prejudice against him was ill-founded and narrow.
But as the Count continued in a perfectly passionless voice and with what seemed to Philip a grim satisfaction, his circumstantial revelations regarding Russia's power, and Russia's definition as to what constituted fatherly protection, he felt all his original doubts reawaken; and then he had caught that momentary, searching, comprehensive malevolent expression which crept over Vladimir's face, though but for a brief second, and this had strengthened him in his dislike and suspicion.
Therefore he was glad of any excuse to leave him and return to the more commonplace, if frivolous, topics of the ladies.
In the silence and security of his own room he had promised himself a somewhat more satisfactory interview with Mdlle. Lamien than had been his portion since the accident, and with this object in view had shaken himself out of his half-mesmeric condition, and deserted the hermitage of his cynical reflections.
But this was destined to be an evening of disappointments, beginning with Patricia's frigid reception of him, and culminating in the non-appearance of Mdlle. Lamien, either at dinner or afterwards in the drawing-room. He had watched in vain for the tall dark figure, with the falling laces half concealing the pale face and white hair, to come gliding in unnoticed, and take the accustomed place within the arched chimney-recess, the slender hands, clasped loosely together, resting on the black dress, the passionless repose of attitude marking a mind far away from the gay surroundings of the Folly.