Tolskoi shrugged his shoulders, and replied under apparent protest:
"It is, I think, well known how successful Count Mellikoff has always been in any affaire du cœur, though such details are better suited for men's ears than for yours, mademoiselle. It can, however, be no detriment to him, even in your estimation, to acknowledge that his past is not written upon an absolutely white page, since you are the only one who has definitely subdued him, and bid fair to turn the brave Lothario into a Benedict. I have yet to meet the woman to whom the reputation of a certain kind of success in a man proves anything but a recommendation."
As Ivor finished, a silence of several moments fell between them. Olga turned her fair face from him and looked out, with unseeing eyes, upon the gay, moving pageant about her. Tolskoi watched her intently but furtively, and saw with inward satisfaction that his barb had gone home and was rankling, and would rankle for days to come, in her heart.
Well he knew Olga Naundorff's character, with its complex mingling of cruelty and softness; its nicely balanced elements of revenge and generosity; its preponderance of pride, its insatiable demand of absolute submission to her will, and its imperious arrogation of supremacy, not only over the present and future of her suitors, but over their past as well. Like her great ancestress, the Empress Catherine, her favours were tyrannies; and woe unto the luckless recipient of them should she find him faithless in the smallest degree! Even his past must be forgotten and forsworn; his existence could only begin with the bestowal of her first smile.
Without knowing it, a true and absolute belief in her cousin Vladimir Mellikoff's integrity had gradually grown up within her; she had come to regard him as the one faithfully sincere lover out of all her admirers, whose very sternness and power of repression spoke more eloquently to her than all the more emotional pleadings of her other suitors. She had believed herself to be the first and only woman on whom he had expended even the smallest measure of love; and to be the object of so unique and chivalrous a devotion, had not been the least among her reasons for yielding to his solicitations.
Ivor's insinuations, therefore, coming as they did, disturbed her more than she cared to realise, and awoke at once that latent suspicion and distrust that forms so pronounced a factor in the Russian character, and caused her to accept his words as positive and final evidence of Vladimir's perfidy and deceit. She never stopped to weigh his actions against Ivor's words; hers was not a nature of sufficiently generous tendencies to turn instinctively from ignominious slander; rather it leapt to conclusions, and from its own attributes pronounced its condemnatory sentence.
In her eyes Vladimir Mellikoff had been tried and sentenced, with Ivor Tolskoi as judge and jury. She could never trust him again, and she would endeavour by every means in her power to unravel his past; holding the threads of it in her slender hand until the hour should come when she could wound deepest, and play with most sinister effect the part of Atropos. What though she stabbed her own heart as well with the sharp scissors of fate? She must bear that, and hers would be the satisfaction of beholding her victim's misery first.
Meantime the Imperial procession flew swiftly along the boulevard, saluted on every side by the shouts of the populace, and the cries of the people: "Long live the Tsar! Long live our little father! Long live the Tsarina!" And the bells rang, and the sun shone, and all was gaiety, and mirth, and mocking optimism.
The crimson blush that had dyed Olga's cheeks so deeply, as the meaning of Ivor's last words became clear to her, had faded and left them colourless when she again turned to him, and her voice had an additional ring of hardness when she next spoke.
"My dear Ivor, we have, I think, always been sufficiently good friends for us not to doubt each other's sincerity of motive, even when we feel forced to speak upon subjects whose very nature precludes any possibility of agreeableness. I do not forget my very singular position in the world; alone as I am, though apparently protected by Imperial power, I owe obedience to no one in matters that concern myself alone. And it is because of this peculiar position that I am about to appeal to your friendship, or whatever sentiment does duty for that obsolete emotion, and beg you to be quite frank with me, and tell me all you can of Count Vladimir Mellikoff's past. Since, as rumour asserts, I am to become his wife, it certainly befits me to inform myself of his antecedents, in order that I may be a true and sustaining helpmate to him. Tell me, then, my dear Ivor, all you know, or all you will reveal concerning my cousin."