“She is very well as far as I know,” Basil replied. “I am from my aunt Lanièvitch’s place; she is gravely ill, and I stayed with her quite a while. But Tatiana is with my wife and boy, so I felt quite safe about them.”
“Give Tatiana my love—my very dearest love. She is the one woman among women. Lord! How she would scold me if she heard! Does she still fly into a rage when one calls her a woman? You remember when she was a little thing, no higher than my boot, the way she would behave when I told her she couldn’t enter the Corps-des-Pages because little girls were never accepted there, for fear they should shock the young gentlemen of that great institution?” And, laughing and talking, the delightful old man accompanied Basil all the way down-stairs, indeed, to the very limits of his cathedral-like hall, the walls of which were almost invisible for the collections of arms, brought back from many campaigns on the confines of the grim White Empire he had so loyally served.
Basil buried himself in the furs of his sleigh with a sigh of utter weariness, but after a brief moment he squared his shoulders with an effort, and sat up again. His horses were making their hoofs ring on the bridge of the Greater Neva, and the enchained river was something to take even his brooding gaze. The “catching of the ice” had that year come on early and with a rush, just when the last late autumn gales were driving across the water, so the frost had fallen upon great waves rolling from bank to bank, and solidified them hand over hand, as it were. The aspect of their frozen strife had in it something singularly fierce and forceful, which well expressed the terrifying majesty of Winter in the North. Like a girdle of multi-colored gems, the electric globes of the quays showed mauve and pale-green and primrose along both sides of the sculptured turmoil of ice, picking out sharply the rigid wave-crests; and beyond, beneath a sky of pellucid sapphire powdered all over with twinkling stars among which winked and flashed the bigger constellations, the swarm of golden church domes—images of faith—looked as though countless fairy palaces were climbing one upon another toward realms of the pure ideal.
The splendidly illumined cross of St. Isaac’s caught Basil’s eye as the horses sped on, and he reverently repeated its sign upon his breast. “God have mercy!” he whispered, and sat very still, looking upward.
CHAPTER XV
Rest well assured that now I see
Nor shall hereafter blinded be.
“Ask Madame la Princesse if she can receive me for a moment.”
Basil, emerging from his dressing-room where he had removed the stains of travel, spoke in his usual quiet voice, and Célèste courtesied to the ground without daring to raise her eyes, for she was terribly afraid of the Prince, and her share in the escapade of two weeks ago filled her with extreme alarm; so she passed on ahead of him toward Laurence’s apartments with suitable haste, and for once without indulging in any coquettishly tripping steps.
For a very few moments only Basil waited in the entrance-hall, and then Célèste threw wide the door of the little salon preceding the bedroom and effaced herself murmuring in a subdued voice:
“Madame la Princesse awaits Monsieur le Prince.”