There is no judge so cruel and relentless as a human heart that owns but one outlet for its affections. Unlike those happier natures who sympathise, and in a manner love all fellow mortals, because of their common humanity and common redemption, this poor starved soul sets all its store on one poor fallible object, and then, when the floods of doubt and mistrust are let loose and sweep away the idol, marring its beauty and exposing its blemishes, it owns no larger creed to fall back upon, and so drifts into the opposite extreme, and welcomes with sardonic pleasure the mocking devils of resentment and retaliation.
It was so with Patouchki. Out of the very affection he had borne Vladimir, sprang now the hydra-headed demon of doubt; and since he could doubt him in one particular, he could doubt him in all. Ivor had set alight such a train of implacability as even he would have hesitated to fire, could he have foreseen its consequences; for with the downfall of Patouchki's perspicuity came his resolve, to punish the one who had thus dared to set at naught his judgment, and who by playing the rôle of deceiver had inflicted on his self-love so dire a wound.
It was well for Vladimir Mellikoff that he could not see the chief's face at that moment, for, as the evening shadows closed around the motionless, lonely figure, sitting so still and rigid, they paused, half afraid to creep about the stern hard countenance, whose eyes gleamed with such passionate fire, whose lips were locked in so firm and cruel a line. And so he sat for hours, his busy fingers idle, his active brain absorbed in bitter contemplation of broken trust and ruined faith.
It had appeared to Ivor an easy and simple task to track and find the poor fugitive, Adèle Lallovich. Petersburg and its environs covered a considerable area, it was true; but these, when compared with Paris or London, sank into insignificance, and yet every day fugitives from justice were hunted down and trapped in those great cities, whose mileage so far exceeded the Muscovite capital.
"It needed but system," so he told himself, with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders at the tactics of the Chancellerie old women. "System and perseverance, and a judicious use of gold," he would back these three against the craft and finesse of any woman. He therefore set about laying the plan of his operations, being careful, however, to keep himself out of the actual work, and to be recognised in it only as the agent of the Chancellerie.
But day succeeded day, and week followed on week, without the least success attending his efforts. Either he had mistaken a chance likeness in some transient worshipper at St. Isaac's for the fugitive, or else Adèle Lallovich had again made good her escape across the frontier. Each day Patouchki looked at him with the same strange, hard expression, as he asked:
"Have you found her?"
And each day Ivor, with a frown, was obliged to reply:
"Not yet! but I shall do so."
Then the chief would turn away with a grim smile, and Tolskoi would vow with hot intemperance that he would be successful, even if his life were to be the penalty.