"You mean to go on with this kind of thing? You might become a sort of interpreter of the two nations to each other. An original idea. The everyday thing is to exasperate Briton against Russ, and Russ against Briton, with every sort of cheap joke and stale falsehood. All the same Mr. Otway, I'm bound to confess to you that I don't like Russia."
"No more do I," returned Piers, in an undertone. "But that only means, I don't like the worst features of the Middle ages. The Russian-speaking cosmopolitan whom you and I know isn't Russia; he belongs to the Western Europe of to-day, his country represents Western Europe of some centuries ago. Not strictly that, of course; we must allow for race; but it's how one has to think of Russia."
Again Mrs. Borisoff scrutinised him as he spoke, averting her eyes at length with an absent smile.
"Here comes my tutelary teapot," she said, as a pretty maid-servant entered with a tray. "A phrase I got from Irene, by the bye—from Miss Derwent, who laughs at my carrying the thing about in my luggage. She has clever little phrases of that sort, as you know."
"Yes," fell from Piers, dreamily. "But it's so long since I heard her talk."
When he had received his cup of tea, and sipped from it, he asked with a serious look:
"Will you tell me about her?"
"Of course I will. But you must first tell me about yourself. You were in business in London, I believe?"
"For about a year. Then I found myself with enough to live upon, and came back to Russia. I had lived at Odessa——"
"You may presuppose a knowledge of what came before," interrupted Mrs. Borisoff, with a friendly nod.