Nadia staggered, rather than walked, to her own little sitting room.
“What did the Anglisky say to you?” asked Boris, somewhat suspiciously.
“Say?” gasped Nadia, who seemed scarcely able to speak for emotion—“words that he meant to be words of hope, but to me they are words of despair. I would rather he had stabbed me. And he looked at me, oh! so pityingly. My God! if he only knew the truth!”
A shudder shook her from head to foot.
Her wondering father repeated his question.
“He promised to buy us our freedom, yours and mine.”
“Glory to God!” cried Boris, clasping his hands fervently together. “Glory to God who has put this thought into the heart of the Englishman! My prayer for you, Nadia, my prayer day and night for years, is answered at last. He’ll keep his word, this Englishman. An Englishman always does. And he shall not lose by his goodness. I will work, work night and day, till I have paid him our ransom twice, yea, three times over. But, Nadia, Nadia, why do you grieve? Is this a thing to grieve about?”
“The offer comes a day too late, my father.”
“A day too late?”
“We are already free,” she replied, with a laugh dreadful in its want of mirth. “Free by the grace of the nether fiend, who is now mocking me with a deed that need not have been done.”