Leah remained perfectly calm, and indulged in badinage. "Demetrius? Oh yes, that horrid little man with the waxed moustache: a doctor or a chemist, wasn't he?"
"Your lover!"
"Oh no. I have no use for that sort of person; if I had I should certainly not pick one out of the gutter. Demetrius? Yes," she went on musingly, but watchful of her enemy, "I had almost forgotten him. He went to St. Petersburg, didn't he? And you loved him, I remember. A queer choice I thought at the time. Well, have you married him?"
"It grows late and you are tired," mocked Katinka, successfully keeping her temper, and thereby disappointing the Duchess; "we had better not waste time."
Leah yawned. "It seems to me that we have been doing nothing else since you came in."
"Demetrius is in England."
"Really! How very interesting! As doctor or Prince?"
"As an escaped Siberian felon."
"No!" Leah's face assumed a skilful expression of mingled pity and horror. "Poor little man! He was mad to go to Russia. I thought so when I read his letter, which I sent you."
"The forged letter."