“Where’s Alex? She must clear up this litter,” Mrs. Browne said, and Zaidee answered, quickly: “Don’t call her, nor anyone. I can do it.”
But Mrs. Browne was bent upon having Alex, and went in quest of her, while Zaidee stopped in her work of picking up the flowers and bits of the vase and laid her hand very firmly on Chance’s collar. Why, I did not then know. He was quiet enough with me, but Zaidee held him with a strong grip until Mrs. Browne came back with another maid, whom she ordered to wipe up the water and remove the table, a leg of which had fallen out. I had a suspicion that it was just ready to fall, for it had swayed a little when I placed it in the center of the room for the lamp, which, fortunately, had not been put upon it.
“Alex has gone to bed, with a bad headache, and I told her to stay there, poor thing,” Mrs. Browne said, and instantly Zaidee’s hand relaxed its hold on Chance’s collar, and she seemed relieved as she dropped into a chair.
“Whose brute is this?” Mrs. Browne inquired; and Zaidee replied: “Monsieur Seguin’s. You’ve heard of the Seguins, on the Nevsky?”
Mrs. Browne shook her head. The Seguins were as strange to her as the Scholaskies.
“Are they nihilists?” she asked, sharply; and I replied: “No, indeed! Madame Seguin is as bitter against them as you are, and her son is a gendarme.”
“Oh!” she said. “And he owns this beast? Seems to me I have heard of him. He can track anybody, if he has once known them and smelled their clothes or hands? He seems very fond of you.”
“Yes,” I answered; “I believe he’d do anything I told him to do, even fly at you!”
“Oh, good Lord!” and she threw up both her hands, and, picking up her cane, left, as I hoped she would, for I wished to be alone with Zaidee.
Mrs. Whitney, who was not strong, and very nervous, had gone to her room at the first sound of Chance at the door, and so I had the girl to myself as soon as the maid had wiped the floor and left the room, with a look at Zaidee which made me think they were not strangers.