"This letter from your late husband;" and Demetrius handed over an envelope directed in Jim's sprawling hand, and sealed with Jim's ancestral coat of arms.
"Fool!" was Leah's comment on this carelessness. "Doesn't he know he is dead, and is about to be buried?" She thrust the letter hastily into her pocket and was about to hurry away, when she caught a glimpse of the Russian's darkening face. She paused wisely, to dismiss him with a compliment. "You have managed splendidly, M. Demetrius."
"Do I not deserve to be called Constantine, now?"
"Yes--no--that is--oh, don't bother;" Lady Jim snatched away the hand he had captured. "You foreigners never learn sense."
"Are you teaching it to me now?" he asked in a metallic voice.
"I am--if you are clever enough to learn the lesson. See as little of me as possible, and don't speak to me at all. When Jim--that is, when Garth--is buried, we shall see."
"But, madame----"
"Quite so. Consider your objections answered."
"They will be answered," said Demetrius, very distinctly, "before the altar of any church you may select."
A remembrance of his capacity for being dangerous, and an anxious survey of his narrowing eyes, made her deceptive. She diplomatically employed feminine strategy, against which no man living can man[oe]uvre. "You doubt me, Constantine," whispered the she-Judas, with trembling tenderness; "will not this----?" She bent forward to drop a butterfly kiss on his forehead, and left him dazed, in the seventh and most exalted Paradise of Fools.