'And then I feel sure money may be a fearful curse if one doesn't use it properly. Of course, I can't disguise from myself that this money was made in the usual way, and that others have lost all that my father and his father have gained, and I wish I could think of some way in which it might give as much happiness as it would have done had it been left in the hands of the workers who toiled to produce it. You are one who should be able to advise me. What shall I do?'
Litvinoff's hair almost stood on end. This was getting his own coin back with a vengeance.
'My dear Miss Stanley,' he said gravely, 'if I were to advise you in the only way which seems possible to me now, your friends would all look upon me as your worst enemy—as an adventurer, as a rogue. Whereas I desire to be looked on as your faithful friend and servant—as the man who, more than all others, would go through fire and water to do you the slightest service.'
'I should hardly have thought you would have cared what my friends or anybody else thought of you,' was Miss Stanley's only reply to this fervid declaration.
'Under most circumstances,' said the Count, with a little wave of his hand, 'I do care for nothing and for nobody; but'—he went on, with a slight tremor in his voice—'rather than incur the dislike of any one whom you respect and love, I would abjure every principle, and sacrifice every cause.'
'I asked for advice,' said Clare, not seeing her way to a more direct answer.
'I know you did,' he spoke rapidly, dropping into a foreign accent; 'and I—I cannot give it you, Miss Stanley. Let me tell you one thing. You know—you have heard, you have read—how in Russia, when money is wanted for our cause, it is the duty of some of us to get it—to persuade it out of those who have. That has often been my duty, and I have never failed. I have taken, over and over again, all, all from those as young as you, and have left them with nothing. I have had to raise enthusiasm by every means, to urge to self-sacrifice, and then to take unsparingly. There are men now, my friends, who, if they knew that you—rich, young, enthusiastic—had asked me for advice, and that I had refused to give it, would say, "Michael Litvinoff has become traitor," and would kill me like a rat. But,' he went on, rising and stretching out his clenched fist, 'did I know that a legion of such men were outside that door, armed and waiting for me, and hearing every word I speak, I would still say that for no cause in the world must you make sacrifices or must you suffer; and I would still say that I would serve you before all causes.'
'Count Litvinoff, I can hear no more of this. Please talk of something else.'
'Ah! now yet once more I have offended you. It is part of my unhappy lot that whenever I speak in earnest I offend you. But I can't talk of something else to-day. I must say adieu, Miss Stanley. If I stayed I should disobey you, and I cannot disobey you.'
'Good-bye, then,' said Clare, extending her hand.