‘The boy becomes audacious,—intolerable,—impertinent,’ she thought. ‘I should have taken him to Ezarhédine’s if I had wanted him. He has had too much sugar, he needs the whip.’
All that was most cruel, most intolerant, most tyrannical in her, came with a cold hard look upon her delicate features; the temper of those of her people who had thrust their swords into the body of Paul began to awake in her. She was in the humour to hurt something, the first thing she saw; her eyes were full of scorn and of command as they looked haughtily at Seliedoff, and arrested him by a glance as he sprang towards her.
‘Who told you that I sent for you?’ she said, with that chill contemptuous gaze which froze the boy and magnetised him in the same moment.
‘No one,’ he said piteously; ‘I thought,—I imagined——’
‘You imagined you were always welcome!’ she replied. ‘A very erroneous imagination. You may be so to Prince Napraxine, you are his cousin; but as the house is mine, I shall prefer that you shall await my invitation.’
She spoke slightingly, and with a coldness like the New Year ice of Russia.
Boris Seliedoff stood and gazed at her helplessly, fascinated by the anger of the gaze which swept over him in such supreme contempt. He had before offended, before had seen what her caprices and her unkindness could become when she was displeased; but all those previous moments had been as summer showers compared with this glacial censure which froze all his hot young blood. So often she had been content to see him; so often she had laughed at him with indulgence and benignity; so often she had called him ‘ beau cousin,‘ ’cher enfant,’ and smiled at his haste and eagerness when he had done much more than this. Might not any stranger have waited to see her pass, to hear her speak?
Nadine Napraxine, with that one comprehensive disdainful glance, passed across the marble floor, and entered through the open glass doors of the house. She said nothing more. The young Seliedoff, who had grown first very red, then very pale, followed her timidly like a chidden hound, and paused upon the threshold, hesitating; he scarcely ventured to enter also without some sign from her. But she gave him none. She passed on through the salons, and ascended the low broad staircase without bestowing on him a single glance. Then he knew that she was gone to her own apartments, where no man living dared follow her. Boris Seliedoff stole into a little salon humbly, and threw himself down on the first seat he saw. He covered his face with his hands; there were tears in his eyes, which fell slowly through his clasped fingers.
He was a young dare-devil who had eaten fire and played with death, and had hewed down men and women and children without mercy by Skobeleff’s side; but he was a mere frightened, timid, wretched lad beneath the lash of her displeasure. He would have crawled for her pardon like her spaniel, even whilst he groped about in bewilderment and darkness to discover his own offence, and could not tell what it had been. An older man would have told him that it had only been the supreme fault of arriving at the wrong moment.