“Fifty thousand.”
“So be it,” said she.
“But you must finish this at once.”
“I’ll claim the money within three days.” She rose and took his arm. “Come, let us go back to the others.”
Two minutes later she was again with Drexel, trying with look and veiled words to win his sympathy for her cause.
CHAPTER XII
IN THE PRINCE’S STUDY
AFTER several more of the countess’s songs of Little Russia, and more vocal trapeze work by the lieutenant among his Italian arias, the company adjourned to the hall, a room so large that a fair-sized house could have been erected therein. Here tables had been placed, and the company eagerly set about playing cards, the great pastime of the blasé Russian nobility. The stakes were moderate, Berloff purposely announcing a low limit that none might leave his house with feelings of regret; but nevertheless the play continued with a silent intensity far into the morning hours.
The countess tried in vain to have a few minutes alone with Drexel during the evening. The next morning, however, she was more fortunate, for when she came down at eleven for her tea and two sugared rolls she found Drexel alone in the breakfast room—no other of the guests had as yet appeared. She assumed command of the great silver samovar, which would be steaming all day, and made Drexel a fresh glass of tea. When she had said the night before to Berloff that she liked Drexel, she had spoken more of truth than the prince imagined—more, perhaps, than even she herself was aware of—and this liking lent a peculiar excitement, a tang, to the game she was now playing.
Before two minutes had passed she had led the talk to Borodin. To shrewd, hard-headed Henry Drexel, whose secret pride it had always been that no one had ever bested him in the game of wits, this frank, handsome woman seemed flushed with excited devotion to her cause. He had a momentary impulse to avoid the risk of working at cross purposes by taking her as an ally into his and Sonya’s plan; but he was restrained by the sense that to do so would be to reveal Sonya’s secret to a third person, and none but she had that right. On the other hand to tell the countess he was not interested would have been false to his attitude—so he temporized.
“Do you know where Borodin is imprisoned?” he asked.