And the man, a timorous German, went.
A few minutes later Steinmetz, presenting himself at the door of the little drawing-room attached to Etta’s suite of rooms, found the princess in a matchless tea-gown waiting beside a table laden with silver tea appliances. A dainty samovar, a tiny tea-pot, a spirit-lamp and the rest, all in the wonderful silver-work of the Slavonski Bazaar in Moscow.
“You see,” she said with a smile, for she always smiled on men, “I have obeyed your orders.”
Steinmetz bowed gravely. He was one of the few men who could see that smile and be strong. He closed the door carefully behind him. No mention was made of the fact that his message had implied, and she had understood, that he wished to see her alone. Etta was rather pale. There was an anxious look in her eyes—behind the smile, as it were. She was afraid of this man. She looked at the flame of the samovar, busying herself among the tea-things with pretty curving fingers and rustling sleeves. But the tea was never made.
“I begin to think,” said Steinmetz, coming to the point in his bluff way, “that you are a sort of beautiful Jonah, a graceful stormy petrel, a fair Wandering Jewess. There is always trouble where you go.”
She glanced at his broad face, and read nothing there.
“Go on,” she said. “What have I been doing now? How you do hate me, Herr Steinmetz!”
“Perhaps it is safer than loving you,” he answered, with his grim humor.
“I suppose,” she said, with a quaint little air of resignation which was very disarming, “that you have come here to scold me—you do not want any tea?”
“No; I do not want any tea.”