Then he sat down, and after a few moments' whispered conversation with Mr. Munger and Mr. Mainwaring, Judge Anstice rose and withdrew, and the crowd were free to force their way out into the streets, flooded with the golden sunshine, and there to discuss this last change in the day's excitements. And so ended the second day of what, in after years, came to be known as Patricia Hildreth's trial.
CHAPTER XII.
OUR LADY OF KAZAN.
When Ivor Tolskoi quitted the presence of Patouchki, he carried with him the remembrance of the chief's troubled face, and almost imperative appeal:
"Find me the woman, here, in Petersburg, and I shall know how to act."
"I will find her," he had replied, and it needed no strong oath or asseveration to convince Patouchki that Ivor would grudge nothing in the fulfilment of this promise.
It was early afternoon when Tolskoi left the Chancellerie; it was long past sundown ere the chief aroused himself from the anxious reverie into which the young man's suspicions and insinuations had plunged him.
Despite the hardness and impregnability of Patouchki's nature, there existed somewhere, deep down in the inner recesses of his rugged heart, a softer spot than he was ever given credit for, and in that remote and hidden nook he had set up the fidelity and friendship of Vladimir Mellikoff, as the one bright sentiment in which to believe and trust. He had watched his career from the outset, and had spared neither influence nor interest to advance the abilities and talents he believed him to possess. He entertained for him a feeling as nearly approaching love as his temperament was capable of experiencing. And he had beheld with concealed delight the increasing regard manifested by his august master towards his favourite. It was owing entirely to his exertions that this last delicate mission had been entrusted to Mellikoff's skill and courage, and he had for once spoken almost with enthusiasm, at the council, of Vladimir's peculiar fitness for the undertaking. He had said to himself that with his success in this Mellikoff's name might be fearlessly put forward for some signal mark of Imperial favour.
It may be imagined then with what proportionate anger and disappointment he listened to Tolskoi's plausible insinuations. They did not lose one feather's weight of value in Ivor's manner of expressing them; the very candour of his words, the collectedness of his bearing, but increased their reasonability; and Patouchki, with his quick perception, realised this, and gave it more weight, perhaps, because of that weakness which he knew existed in his heart for the absent Vladimir.