"Could I only add my prayer to his," murmurs Brandolin, "and hope that in the autumn——"
Xenia Sabaroff looks at him with a strange gaze: it is penetrating, dreamy, wistful, inquiring.
"We jest as the child jests," she says, abruptly, and walks onward.
"I do not jest," says Brandolin.
The Babe glances at them under his thick eyelashes, and, being a fine mouche, only innocent in appearance, he runs off after a butterfly. He has not been brought up in a feminine atmosphere of poudre de riz and lait d'iris without learning discretion.
CHAPTER XIII.
"The Babe is a better courtier than gardener," says Xenia Sabaroff, as she shakes a green aphis out of her rose: her tone is careless, but her voice is not quite under her command, and has a little tremor in it.
Brandolin looks at her with impassioned eyes: he has grown very pale.
"It is no jest with me," he says, under his breath. "I would give you my life if you would take it?"