To have waited unbidden in her room, seen by all the world, sulking there as though he were a lover once favoured, now dispossessed; making of himself a spectacle, a ridicule, a theme for the comment and chatter of society—it seemed to her such intolerable presumption, such infinite insolence, that she could have struck him with her clenched hand if her dignity had not forbade her. For all her world to see this love-sick boy half-hidden in an inner room, as though by her welcome and authority! She, who had dismissed kings as others dismiss lackeys when she had found them too presuming, could find no chastisement vast enough for such a sin against her authority and her repute.
Seliedoff was but a spoilt child; he had had his own will and way unchecked all his short life, and all his companions and servants had existed only for his pleasure. A foolish and doting mother had never bridled his wishes or tamed his passions. Before Nadine Napraxine alone had the arrogant young noble become submissive, suppliant, and humble. Now, in his torture and his sense of wrong, the natural self-will and fury of a spoilt child crossed, of an adoring youth checked and repudiated, broke away from the bonds of fear in which she had always held them. He answered her with a torrent of words, unconsidered and unwise, beyond all pardon.
‘You have treated me like a dog!’ he said in conclusion, his voice choked in his throat, the veins of his forehead injected. ‘You have caressed me, called me, allowed me every liberty, been pleased with my every folly; and now you turn me out of your house as you would turn the dog if he misbehaved himself. But I am not a dog, I am a man, and that you shall know, by God——’
He came nearer to her, his eyes red and covetous, his boyish face inflamed with fiercest passion, his arms flung out to seize her.
She looked at him, such a look as she would have given to a madman to control, and awe him; he paused, trembled, dared not draw nearer to her.
She was deeply, implacably offended by what had passed. For him to permit himself such language and such actions, seemed to her as intolerable an insult as if the African boy in her service had dared to disobey her. It was the first time that anyone had ever ventured to insult her; it irritated all her delicacy, infuriated all her pride. She never paused to think what provocation she had given; she would have struck him dead with a glance had she been able.
‘You are unwell, and delirious,’ she said in her serenest, chillest tones. ‘You know neither what you do or say. I have been kind to you, and you have presumed to misinterpret my kindness. Your cousin would treat you like a hound, if he knew. But you are ill, so there is excuse for you. Go home, and I will send you my physicians.’
Then she rang; and when a servant entered from the antechamber she turned to him:
‘M. le Comte Seliedoff desires his carriage.’