In his journal, at our first stopping place, Jack wrote: “Thank the Lord, we are out of Russia, and can sneeze, if we want to. I have had a jolly time, too. An adventure with a real nihilist, and seen him arrested. I always said she had big feet and hands. But she was game, and I liked her. I don’t understand Katy, unless she was in love with him. She says she suspected it was Ivan, and not Sophie, that night at Mme. Scholaskie’s. Well, I had a squabble with some gendarmes, and told ’em what I thought of ’em, and I guess I just missed Siberia. I ought to be satisfied with my Russian trip, and I am, and don’t care to repeat it; but what a lot I shall have to tell when I get home!”
CHAPTER XIV.
LETTERS.
From St. Petersburg we went to Italy for the rest of the winter; and April found us again in Paris, at our old quarters, the Bellevue. As soon as we were settled, we looked up Sophie Scholaskie, whom we found up three long flights of stairs, in a very pretty little apartment, where she lived alone, with a woman to come morning and night to see to her rooms. She was a very handsome young woman, and so much like Ivan that I did not wonder he could pass for her so easily. She was delighted to see us, especially Katy, in whom she seemed to feel she had a particular right of ownership, and whom she scrutinized very closely all the time we were with her, and kissed at parting, saying, “For Ivan’s sake!”
She talked a great deal, but in a pleasant, ladylike way, asking many questions about her mother and Ivan. She had tried to keep him from going to St. Petersburg, she said, knowing how hot-headed he was when among his own friends. But nothing could deter him, and Siberia was the result. He had been there some time. Indeed, she believed he had started on his northern journey the day we left the city. He had been treated with a good deal of kindness, thanks to Michel Seguin, who had used his influence all along the line. Did we know Michel?
The color in my face was a sufficient reply, and she went on: “Of course you do. I remember hearing of the American lady whom he would marry, if she were willing and it were not for his termagant old mother.”
“No!” I exclaimed. “M. Seguin neither wants me nor I him. We are friends; that’s all, and his mother need have no fear of me.”
Sophie laughed, and replied: “It would be good, pious work to live with her, I think. She is here now, at the Grand Hotel, with her maid, spending what she won at Monte Carlo. Perhaps you’d like to call upon her? This is her day.”
“Never!” I answered, quickly, with a vivid remembrance of her manner toward me the night I dined with her.
I had had enough of Madame Seguin, but did not express myself to Sophie, who spoke next of her grandmother, who lived in London.
“I think old ladies all get queer,” she said, “and grandma is the queerest of all, but I want you to call upon her. In fact, she expects you. She is half English, you know. Her mother was a Londoner, but her father was a Russian. She may amuse you.”