Baranoff and Benningsen had met by chance upon the steps of the Embassy, each bringing the same piece of news, the Count intending to communicate it to the Ambassador, the General to Pauline.
Though apprised of Wilfrid’s arrival, Baranoff knew nothing whatever of his arrest and escape, and it was only in the interval of waiting that he heard the story from Benningsen. The news filled the Count with secret rage. Hitherto hating Pauline a little, he now began to hate her more. To think that but for her he might this night have had Wilfrid a prisoner in the Citadel, subjecting him to insult and degradation! Instead of which Wilfrid had now found powerful champions in the Ambassador and his daughter!
Mingled with Baranoff’s ire was a high degree of fear. Self-interest had prompted him to withhold from Paul the reason of his failure at Berlin, and in thus hoodwinking the Czar he had committed a kind of treason. Now should Wilfrid have given Pauline the correct version of that affair, it would perhaps go the round of St. Petersburg society, bringing upon him ridicule and mortification, to say nothing of dismissal from office—or worse, should the matter reach the ears of the Czar.
Had he not sent in his card to the Ambassador’s daughter, he would now have retreated. A coward at heart, he glanced apprehensively at the door by which Pauline would enter. Supposing she should appear in company with Wilfrid, and he with taunting tongue should renew the challenge! Outside the Embassy Baranoff was a great man, a man to be feared, a man who, with a few strokes of his pen, could send an opponent to Siberia; but his power stopped at the door of the Embassy; inside it he was helpless, and no match for the mocking Baroness and the devil-may-care Englishman.
It was a relief to him when Pauline entered alone.
Pauline had no great liking for the coarse burly Benningsen, but was compelled by parity of political interests to keep on friendly terms with him.
Far different was the case with Baranoff: him she loathed, as every pure woman was bound to loathe the ex-lover of the dissolute Catharine. It always cost Pauline an effort to treat him with ordinary civility.
“Aha, Baroness!” cried Benningsen. “What is this you’ve been doing? Rescuing in broad daylight a prisoner of the Czar, and whisking him into the Embassy. By Heaven, you’re a bold one!”
“And you’re not,” replied Pauline, whose habit it was to speak her mind freely to the General, who was accustomed to speak freely to her. “I marked you, running from the face of Paul, putting life before honour.”