"Ah, flatterer!" cried the little Countess, tapping him lightly on the arm with her fan. "See, here she comes."
At that moment the velvet curtains at the far end of the grand salon parted for a moment, to allow the egress of a tall slight figure, that moved down the room with an almost regal grace, and whose white draperies of soft lustreless silk swept after her in rhythmic curves.
It was Olga, and Ivor, as he beheld her after two months of separation, felt his heart leap up in glad response to her beauty.
Indeed, never had she looked more beautiful. The grand curves of her perfect figure, well defined by the low-cut bodice and falling laces of her dress, her head, carried with all its imperial haughty grace, crowned by the masses of her golden hair, her eyes so deep and wonderful beneath the dark level brows, the "pomegranate flower" of her mouth showing vividly against the colourless fairness of her complexion. She wore a sapphire and diamond ornament upon her neck, and the rare stones flashed and scintillated beneath her quick-coming breath.
Ivor stepped forward eagerly, his face flushed with the renewed ecstasy of her presence, and bending low before her, murmured some inaudible greeting. The Countess Vera watched them, a smile on her brilliant little face.
Olga drew back, with an almost imperceptible movement, and with a sudden dramatic gesture repelled, rather than welcomed, the young man. She had not seen him since that day when at his thinly veiled allusions, and suggestive words, all trust and belief in the truth and honesty of human nature died within her. In that brief hour's drive it seemed to her she had grown years older, and beyond that day she never looked.
With the melting of the snows of winter she had put from her whatever of softness or leniency belonged to her girlhood; with her womanhood she adopted the creed of her world, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
"Ah, Ivor," she exclaimed, controlling instantly both voice and manner, and holding out her hand in greeting, "so you have come back. What an eternity you have been away! Petersburg has been only half itself without you."
She smiled as she spoke, and the charm of her smile counterbalanced the indifference of her tones.
"Petersburg cannot have been so desolate without me, as I have been without Petersburg," answered Tolskoi, gaily. "Is one permitted, mademoiselle, to express one's admiration and pleasure in beholding you so radiant and so—happy?"