CHAPTER VIII.
At D'Estreville's second visit to old Pierre Dupré's he was accompanied by Paul de Tourelle and by Vera Demidof, now a beautiful girl of nineteen. The Baron was proud of his pretty cousin, between whom and his friend Paul a considerable friendship had lately sprung up.
In so far as De Tourelle was concerned, his sentiments towards Vera differed, as he had found to his surprise, from those he had ever experienced before this time towards any member of the fair sex. Up to the day upon which he had first made acquaintance with Vera Demidof, Paul had looked upon women as toys created for the delectation and amusement of mankind; he was always glad to play with them, to have his pleasure in their society, but not to take them seriously. He had always found young women in his own class charmed to meet him upon his own ground; to excurse with him as far as he was pleased to go into the pleasant glades of love-making, but to take him no more seriously than he chose to be taken.
With Vera it was otherwise. From the first he was aware that here was a creature of a different make, a more attractive toy than any he had yet set himself to play with, and, withal, one which, somehow, was extremely difficult to handle. Paul found that he was unable to have his way with this little Russian; she was unlike the French girls he was accustomed to; she took life more seriously, moved more cautiously, maintained an attitude of "stand-offishness" which at first puzzled him very much and perhaps exasperated him, but which he presently began to admire and respect.
"You'll have to be careful, my friend," Henri d'Estreville had told Paul, early in his acquaintance with Vera, before De Tourelle realised that his heart was in danger; "Vera is not like our French girls; not only is she far more serious-minded, but also she is a fiancée, after a fashion."
"A fiancée?" exclaimed Paul, laughing boisterously—"Mademoiselle Demidof fiancée? To whom? You rave, man!"
"No, it is true; she is betrothed; observe that I added 'after a fashion'. She was betrothed to some Russian bear as a child."
"Bah! as a child! and the bear a child also? She has never mentioned to me this young bear of hers. You speak foolishly, Henri, mon cher; such things are not done."
"Ask her for yourself," Henri laughed. "For the matter of that, fall in love with my cousin, if you like. I would rather she mated with a good Frenchman than with a—what do you call them—a Moujik of Russia."
Paul did not, however, ask Vera as to her betrothal. He treated the matter with sufficient contempt to forget all about it. As to the second half of Henri's advice, however, he followed it to the letter, and fell so completely in love with Vera Demidof that he was himself astonished, for he had always boasted that to fall in love was not in his line, and was, indeed, a mistake he would never commit, since it was his pride to be a soldier of the French Army, and he possessed ambitions which he could not afford to thwart by indulgence in such foolishness as love.