And fired with this most laudable device, Mimi trotted away very fast, without so much as a backward look at the recreant Trim. Little recked George Newbold of the awful fate in store for him at the hands, or rather in the shrill voice of his small daughter! But surely, could he have foreseen her advent in the character of a red Indian, he would have devoutly thanked chance for his timely delivery.
As Marianne tripped along, a dark shadow fell suddenly across her path and stopped her further advance. Pushing back the fringe of golden hair, that fell almost into her sapphire blue eyes, the child halted and looked up a little bewildered.
It was Vladimir Mellikoff who stood before her, looking very tall and dark against the brilliant green of the sun-swept lawn behind him. The child gazed up at him gravely and without speaking. This was not a familiar figure in her little world; she would have greeted Jack Howard, or Freddy Wylde, or even old Sir Piers Tracey with her accustomed quaint mingling of condescension and intimacy; but this tall, dark stranger, with his sombre face and deep black eyes, was unknown to her, and because unknown was not to be put on the same footing with her old companions.
However, Esther Newbold's small daughter was sufficiently a little worldling in training to recognise in this stranger one of "papa's men," as she called them, classifying all unknown masculine visitors under one head; she did not, therefore, run away, but stood quietly silent, her eyes raised frankly to his, and the sunlight turning to living gold each tendril of her fair hair.
Vladimir Mellikoff could be very gentle and winning to children; they touched that inner chord of tenderness that vibrated so passionately to Olga Naundorff's lightest word, and something in the fair child's face, with its deep blue eyes, recalled to him that other proud Russian face, with the violet eyes and scornful, curved lips. He bent down and spoke to Mimi in his softest voice.
"You are little Marianne, are you not?" he said.
"I am Marianne Newbold," replied the child, with grave directness.
"I wonder if you could say my name," continued Mellikoff, persuasively. "It is not so pretty as yours, but then I am a man, you see."
"Men's is never so pitty," remarked the child, didactically. "What is your name?"
"Vladimir," replied Count Mellikoff, gravely, and repeating each syllable distinctly: "Vla—di—mir. Do you think you can say it? Try."