With an execration on her lips Laurence sprang up and came close to her husband. “Ah!” she cried. “You mistook your feelings, did you? And it is you who dare to call me to account for my conduct? You, who have loved Marguerite de Plenhöel from time immemorial, one might say—and it is you who blame me for what you pretend I have done—you? No doubt she has not waited until now to reciprocate your tender affection. I am—”
She did not finish, for with lightning-like rapidity his hand closed upon her arm. “We will leave her name out of this, if you please!” he said in a tone of command she had not yet heard from him. “You are not fit to pronounce it. Nor have you the right to draw infamous conclusions about her—or me, either—out of your richly furnished stores of malice. You know without a peradventure that you are slandering the purest of God’s creatures, and—a man who has given you every reason to respect him. Now, please, no more noise, in the interest of your own future. Try, if you can, to act with a little more dignity—before others at least.”
He released her with a gesture bordering on disgust, and she fell heavily into his arms in one of those short-lived fainting-fits that are the usual resort of overstrained feminine nerves. He lifted her to the lounge, gave a quick touch to her wrist—which would have completely reassured him had he been at all anxious—and, striding to the door, called Célèste.
“Your mistress is not well; look to her!” he said; and when Laurence opened her eyes she saw that he was gone.
CHAPTER XVI
There always is—you’ll find it true,
A dance before a Waterloo.
“One little, two little, three little, four little, five little Russian boys!” chanted Piotr, counting on his fingers as he stood in the window recess of his aunt Tatiana’s boudoir. Outside the sun was shining bravely on the tender spring verdure of Tsarsköe-Seloe, one of the most delicious villegiaturas in the immediate neighborhood of Petersburg. Behind him towered Garrassime, whose thick hair had during the last few months turned from dusky iron to silver, and in whose faithful eyes dwelt an unconquerable pain.
“I say, Garrassime,” cried Piotr, interrupting his game, “there’s going to be a review! The soldiers are coming to camp at Krétovsky—the tall ones you know—with the big sabers and the long cloaks. Won’t that be jolly? Cousin Andrei-Andreitch is a captain there!”
“Of the Gardes-à-Cheval, my little dove. Yes!” replied Garrassime, gently stroking the chestnut locks straying across the boy’s forehead; “yes, my lambkin, it will be jolly for you.”
“And for you, too, Garrassime,” the child declared. “I’ve noticed you don’t like this place as well as Tverna, or is it because you miss papa? I miss papa. Oh, so much!—not mamma, she was always so nasty. Don’t you think she was nasty, Garrassime?”