Drexel, suddenly cold, stood with bulging eyes fixed upon her. For four nights before she had worn a factory girl’s shawl and jacket, and he had told her that he loved her!
CHAPTER IX
ONE WOMAN—OR TWO?
AND so this famous beauty, this proud daughter of Russia’s proudest nobility, was the unknown girl of his strange adventure, was the working-girl who had talked so passionately of liberty! Now, in this almost royal circle, she was cold and haughty and disdainful, her manner as lofty toward all beneath her as could have been the highest of French noblewomen’s in the days before the Revolution overwhelmed France with its cataclysm;—and yet, how she had flamed forth in her love of the people! How it could all be was almost too much for Drexel’s reeling brain; but that wonderful grace, those wonderful eyes, that wonderful face—Russia held not their duplicate!
Until this moment it had not occurred to him that there had been anything unworthy in his proposal of marriage. But now, swift after the first blow of astonishment, he grew hot with shame through all his body. He had, in high-born, lofty fashion offered to lift her out of her poverty and give her wealth; he whose wealth was all yet to be made, to her one of Russia’s richest heiresses. He had spoken of his birth, and had offered her position and family; he who barely knew the name of his grandfather’s father, to her whose forebears were great nobles when the Norsemen made their storied voyage to America; whose line went back and back even to the mighty Rurick, and then disappeared into the mist of legend that hangs over all things Russian before the ninth century.
But there were too many stirring puzzles here for even shame to dominate him long. He had been with her in this same St. Petersburg in her role of working-girl but four evenings ago, yet how was it that to-day she had arrived in state from abroad? And why had she caused him to be held a prisoner? And what would be the effect on her, who thought him safe under guard, suddenly to face him?
But the questions that surged into his mind had no time to complete themselves, much less to find answers, for the princess had crossed the ball-room and was now but a few yards distant. He was certain she had not seen him, and he turned his back to avoid her for a double reason; because, in his shame he shrunk from the meeting, and because he feared seeing him there unexpectedly might deeply startle her and even be her betrayal. But a hand fell upon his arm, and a voice in French—Prince Berloff’s voice—fell upon his ears:
“Drexel, I want you to meet my cousin, Princess Valenko.”
He would have spared her this public show of her dismay if he could, but now it was beyond him. Hating himself that it fell to his part thus to be her undoing, he turned and looked her in the face.
But there was no falling back, no consternation, not so much as a start. She gave him a straight cold look, in which there was not the faintest recognition of a previous meeting.
So surprised was he by her self-command that he could only mumble his way through the introduction, and he only vaguely heard her express in composed, formal phrases her pleasure at meeting one who was in a manner to be a relative. Then the others who had surrounded her were for a moment swept away, and they two were left alone together, face to face.