“Saw me with her—where?”
“In St. James’s Park. I was sitting down. You passed quite close to me.”
“Oh, yes! I did meet her one day, by pure chance. I never saw you. Curious too, she was very upset because Boris had had a letter from Sir Robert Rawson asking him to go and see him, and she didn’t want him to do so.”
“Did he go?” asked Grace quickly.
“I don’t know—I haven’t seen or heard from any of them since. But if he did, and anything transpired that would give us any light, Maddelena would have got it out of him and sent word to me—sure.”
“I wonder why Sir Robert wanted to see him,” mused Grace, “and why Miss Maddelena didn’t want him to go?”
He smiled.
“She was afraid it would upset him. She’s very fond of Boris, and that’s why she was so jealous of Lady Rawson’s influence over him. As a matter of fact, she’s made up her mind to marry him, and I guess she’ll have her way! She’ll be a charming and a jolly good wife too, though it will be a case of ‘one who loves and one who graciously permits himself to be loved.’ They’re going to the States in the spring; Cacciola’s just fixed up a season in New York, where Boris will make his début, and then they’ll go on tour. I bet Maddelena comes back as Mrs. Melikoff. She’s just about the most masterful young woman I’ve ever met, though a real good sort too.”
He smiled again, indulgently and reminiscently, then sighed.