"Darling Brute, here you are!" Harietta cried delightedly, rising from her sofa and throwing herself into his arms. "I've packed Stanislass off to the St. James' to play piquet. I have been all alone waiting for you for the last hour—I began to fear you would not come."
Verisschenzko looked at her, with his cynical, humorous smile, whose meaning never reached her. He took in the transparent garments which hardly covered her, and then he bent and picked up a man's handkerchief which lay on a table near.
"Tiens! Harietta!" he remarked lazily. "Since when has Stanislass taken to using this very Eastern perfume?" and he sniffed with disgust.
The wide look of startled innocence grew in Madame Boleski's hazel eyes.
"I believe Stanislass must have got a mistress, Stépan. I have noticed lately these scents on his things—as you know, he never used any before!"
"The handkerchief is marked with 'F.A.' I suppose the blanchisseuse mixes them in hotels. Let us burn the memento of a husband's straying fancies then; the taste in perfumes of his inamorata is anything but refined," and Verisschenzko tossed the bit of cambric into the fire which sparkled in the grate.
"I've lots of news to tell you, Darling Brute—but I shan't—yet! Have you come to England to see that bit of bread and butter—or—?"
But Verisschenzko, with a fierce savagery which she adored, crushed her in his arms.
CHAPTER XI
On the Tuesday morning after the Carlton dinner, fate fell upon Denzil and Amaryllis in the way the jade does at times, swooping down upon them suddenly and then like a whirlwind altering the very current of their destiny. It came about quite naturally, too, and not by one of those wildly improbable situations which often prove truth to be stranger than fiction.