Whereon the Russian secretary takes a "Figaro" off the newspaper-table, and rudely opens it and flourishes it between Mr. Wootton and himself, in sign that the conversation is ended.
Mr. Wootton has never been so treated in his life.
CHAPTER XI.
Brandolin walks down the opening between the glass doors into the garden. He paces impatiently the green shady walks where he has seen her on other mornings than this. It is lovely weather, and the innumerable roses fill the warm moist air with fragrance. There is a sea-breeze blowing from the sea-coast some thirty miles away; his schooner is in harbor there; he thinks that it would be wisest to go to it and sail away again for as many thousand miles as he has just left behind him. Xenia Sabaroff has a great and growing influence over him, and he does not wish her to exercise it and increase it if this thing be true: perhaps, after all, she may be that kind of sorceress of which Mary Stuart is the eternal type,—cold only that others may burn, reculant pour mieux sauter, exquisitely feminine only to be more dangerously powerful. He does not wish to play the rôle of Chastelard, or of Douglas, or of Henry Darnley. He is stung to the quick by what he has heard said.
It is not new: since the arrival of Gervase the same thing has been hinted more or less clearly, more or less obscurely, within his hearing more than once; but the matter-of-fact words of Litroff have given the tale a kind of circumstantiality and substance which the vague uncertain suggestions of others did not do. Litroff has, obviously, no feeling against her; he even speaks of her with reluctance and admiration: therefore his testimony has a truthfulness about it which would be lacking in any mere malicious scandal.
It is intensely painful to him to believe, or even to admit to himself as possible, that it may be thus true. She seems to him a very queen among women: all the romance of his temperament clothes her with ideal qualities. He walks on unconsciously till he has left the west garden and entered the wood which joins it, and the grassy seats made underneath the boughs. As he goes, his heart thrills, his pulse quickens: he sees Madame Sabaroff. She is seated on one of the turf banks, reading, the dog of the house at her feet. He has almost walked on to her before he has perceived her.
"I beg your pardon," he murmurs, and pauses, undecided whether to go or stay.
She looks at him a little surprised at the ceremony of his manner.
"For what do you beg my pardon? You are as free of the wood as I," she replies, with a smile. "I promised the children to keep their dogs quiet, and to await them here as they return from their church."