"She is a very handsome person: any one would look at her," replies her cousin. Were he not so perfectly well-bred and impassive, it might almost be said that the suggested presentation fills him with some vague nervousness.
Nina Curzon watches him inquisitively as he is led up and presented to Madame Sabaroff.
"I think I have had the honor before now, in Petersburg," murmurs Gervase. She looks at him very coldly.
"I think not," she replies. The words are of the simplest, but c'est le ton qui fait la musique, and, for the solitary time in his existence, Lord Gervase is embarrassed.
Brandolin, playing with the colley dog near at hand, listens and observes.
Lady Usk is not so observant. "It is a long time since he was in Russia," she says to her friend, "I dare say you have forgotten. His father was alive, and his name was Baird then, you know."
Xenia Sabaroff makes a little polite gesture expressive of entire indifference to the change in these titles. With an action which would be rude in any woman less high-bred, she turns away her head and speaks to Brandolin, ignoring the acquaintance and the presence of Gervase.
Across the good-natured and busy brain of her hostess there flashes an electric and odious thought: is it possible that Usk may be right, and that there may be something wrong, after all, in this her latest and most adored friend? She feels that she will die of suffocated curiosity if she do not speedily get her cousin alone and learn all he has ever known or heard of the Princess Sabaroff.
"A snub direct!" whispers Lawrence Hamilton to Mr. Wootton.
"Or a cut direct: which?" says that far-sighted gentleman.