Fate, however, was against him, for he did not see Mdlle. Naundorff before his departure. He was often at the Palace, frequenting the Court salon with sedulous regularity; but Olga never appeared, and he learned from the Countess Vera that she was still indisposed, "though not in danger of death," that little lady added, sharply, and with a meaning look at Ivor's downcast face.
CHAPTER XIV.
"FIND ME THE WOMAN."
It was early April, when Tolskoi reluctantly quitted Petersburg, and it was June before he returned.
The Court was still at the Winter Palace, for the winter season had been a long and cruel one, and even with the first days of June, summer advanced with but lagging footsteps, seemingly unwilling to awake the gay capital from its long frost-bitten sleep.
Political affairs also held the Emperor, whose presence in the metropolis was considered by his ministers to be a necessity; therefore, when Ivor shook off the dust of many days, travel and alighted from his coupé at the railway terminus, it was to see the familiar standard floating from the Winter Palace, and the tall lance-like spire of Petropavlovsk rising above the creeping waters of the Neva, and piercing the vivid blue of the sky beyond. The Troitski bridge and Boulevard-park were gay with passing traffic, and noisy with the cries of the flower vendors, whose trays and baskets overflowed with the blue violets of the Novgorod.
Tolskoi made his way at once to the Imperial Chancellerie, where he found Patouchki, as he had left him, seated at his desk and busy over what seemed to Ivor the identical despatches that had surrounded him two months ago. The only observable change in the chief's entourage lay in the open windows, and the softness of the west wind, as it stirred the papers with a gentle touch, and yet that had a bitter chill even in its caresses.
Patouchki, he thought, looked worn and harassed; the sallowness of the flesh tints, the deeper lines about his forehead and mouth, spoke of days and nights of ceaseless occupation and anxiety; and to Ivor, fresh from the almost limitless freedom of his wide frontiers, spoke also of the despotic rule and iron obedience with which those who serve Russia, must accept Russia's dictates.
The chief looked up, and greeted him as though but a day's separation lay between them.