At this point, having finished with his timber, Boris entered to see what services he could render. Naturally enough Wilfrid was desirous of learning all he could about the Princess.
“You waited on the boyarine at breakfast, I presume?” he said, addressing the pair. “How was she looking?”
“Rather pale and anxious,” replied Boris. “She scarcely spoke. In fact, her lively manner of last night was altogether gone.”
“And Ouva—I mean him whom Nadia calls the Ugly One? He breakfasted too, I suppose?”
“Sitting opposite to the boyarine,” replied Boris, who seemed to have kept a keen eye on his visitors. “He, too, looked rather grave. I caught him more than once watching her curiously. Her eyes would droop when she became conscious of it.”
“In short,” said Wilfrid with a mirthless laugh, “she might have been taken for a child that has done wrong, and he for a parent that had been scolding her.”
The innkeeper with some surprise murmured that Wilfrid’s words exactly hit off the situation.
For appearance’s sake Wilfrid went on eating, but his appetite had gone. He was possessed by a horrible sinking of heart; he suspected, nay, he felt sure, that his long stay in the Princess’s bed-chamber had become known, and that Prince Ouvaroff was disposed to put the worst construction upon the event.
The picture of the fair and innocent Princess, sitting mute and wretched amid her escort, exposed to coldness and suspicion, and unable to vindicate herself, filled Wilfrid with almost intolerable anguish.
Upon the woman whose love it was the one desire of his life to gain he had brought cruel reproach. Already in imagination Wilfrid heard the mocking laugh and ribald jest directed against the Princess by the immoral circle at the Court of the Czar. “She is only like the rest of us.”