"You are too amusing. I will say it for you then in Poltavian. It's a sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she knighted him. It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to ask her:
"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you had arranged he should do—he should betray you—should have warned your husband and have gone so far as to fetch the King to waylay you and stop your flight!"
But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition with a word of disbelief.
"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?"
She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis were real to her at last:
"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world."
Bulstrode pursued: "What—would you think of Gresthaven—if in order to save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter your decision—he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as surely betraying your good faith?"
Here she looked keenly through him—read him—then waited a second before intensely exclaiming:
"Gresthaven—what have you done?"
His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. He did not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in their own minds.