This afternoon, in spite of her excitement over what lay ahead of them, Barbara did not allow the coat to pass unnoticed a second time.
“For goodness’ sake, Mildred, where did you get that magnificent garment?” she demanded, just as they were about to go downstairs to get into their sleigh. “You owned a very nice coat when we left you behind in Grovno, but some fairy wand must have changed it. This is the most wonderful sable I ever saw.”
Mildred flushed and then laid her cheek against the beautiful, soft brown warmth of her furs. “It is time you and Nona were speaking of my grandeur,” she declared. “You see, in getting away from the fort at the last I stupidly left my own furs behind; indeed, I don’t know what became of them. General Alexis noticed that I was cold almost immediately. Somehow, after he began to get stronger, he managed to have this coat brought to the country house where we were staying. Then just before we started to Petrograd he presented it to me. Of course, I did not feel that I ought to accept it and insisted I could not. But General Alexis said that he had received so much kindness from me, he thought it very ungenerous of me to make him altogether my debtor. I didn’t know what to do. Do you think it wrong to accept it, Bab? Somehow I did not know how to continue to refuse.”
As Barbara was just going into her bedroom at this moment, she made no reply. Nona was more reassuring.
“Of course it was all right, Mildred, or at least I suppose it was if General Alexis insisted, and you had done a great deal for him.”
Then Nona followed Barbara. Barbara was standing perfectly still in the center of the room and apparently thinking with all the concentration possible.
“I wonder if this General Alexis is more fond of Mildred than he would be of any nurse who might have cared for him?” Barbara murmured. Then she shook her head. “That was an absurd suggestion on my part and Mildred would not like it. I am sorry,” she said.
At the door of the Winter Palace, after the girls had passed beyond the servants and the detectives who watch every human being permitted to approach their Imperial Majesties, the three American girls were ushered into a reception room. Except for the fact that there were more paintings on the walls, the room resembled other similar chambers now left on exhibition at Versailles or the Louvre in Paris.
However, the girls had little time for investigation, for almost at once General Alexis entered the room to greet them. He was accompanied by a lieutenant who was his aide. To Nona Davis’ surprise, the young man proved to be Lieutenant Michael Orlaff, whom she had not seen since the afternoon when she had walked to the fortress with him and confided the news of Sonya Valesky’s arrest.
After a few moments of general conversation a man servant, wearing an elaborate uniform, announced that General Alexis and his guests might walk into the Czar’s private sitting room.