"Oh yes; that is quite arranged. It will be my first visit to America—that wonderful land."
"America—wonderful? Well, I should say!" said Miss Chrysie, coming behind them at this instant, and putting her hands on the backs of their chairs, "It's a pity you can't come too, countess. I guess I could promise you both a pretty interesting time from Niagara right away to——"
"Suppose we say the Magnetic Pole?" murmured Sophie, turning her head back, and looking up at her with a glance that was lazy and yet full of challenge.
"Well, yes, that might be interesting, too," replied Miss Chrysie, looking steadily down into her eyes. "Those works that the viscount and poppa are getting fixed up there, whatever they mean them for, must be something pretty wonderful, for they're spending quite a lot of money on them. It might not be impossible that we'll be going up to see them some day, and if you'd come across, countess, I dare say I might be able to show you round."
"Really, that's more than kind of you, Miss Vandel; but I'm sorry to say that my father's official duties demand his presence at Petersburg, and we absolutely must leave when the house-party at Orrel Court breaks up; but excuse me, I see my father beckoning to me. I will leave you my seat, Miss Vandel."
She got up, and walked away forward to where her father was standing near the verandah. Miss Chrysie took possession of her seat, clasped her hands behind her head, stretched out her legs till a pair of dainty pointed toes peeped from under the hem of her dress, and said, with a sidelong glance at Adelaide, and in a slow drawl:
"Nice girl the countess, marquise, and very good-looking—very; but, somehow—well, perhaps you haven't noticed it, but I have—she seems to have a sort of way of talking at you instead of to you, and always meaning just something a bit different to what she says."
"It is quite possible," said Adelaide, slightly coldly, for Chrysie's words were just a little too frank to please her taste; "but, you see, she's a Russian; and the daughter of a diplomat. All Russians of good family are born diplomatists, and diplomacy, you know——"
"Why yes," laughed Chrysie; "diplomacy is the whole art and science of saying one thing and meaning another, and getting the other fellow to believe that you're telling the ironclad truth when you are lying like Ananias; and I guess the countess hasn't learnt her lessons very badly."
"In other words, Miss Vandel," said Adelaide, with a laugh that had a note of harshness in it, "you think the Countess Valdemar is, to put it into quite brutal English, a liar."