"Yes," said Boris, "and if it is of any interest to you to know it, I propose to marry the lady."
"Indeed!" said Paul.
He placed the picture carefully in his breast-pocket.
"You must forgive my being rude," he added, "but I should not now be in this country if I had not every intention of marrying the lady myself."
Boris was a man used to being hard hit. He was steeled against cunningly and swiftly-dealt blows, such as he himself administered, but this declaration of Sir Paul's, that he intended to marry Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, took him quite back.
"Oh!" he exclaimed softly, and his voice had a certain note of surprise in it.
The baronet smiled a little grimly, but his eyes were as serene and as cold as ever.
Boris's "Oh!" had told him much.
He realized that he had dealt his host an exceedingly well-landed blow. Then the baronet's smile died, for, following the train of his suspicious thoughts, he instinctively grasped and held on to the idea that just as Boris had been searching his kit-bag for the purpose of blackmail, so that individual purposed marriage with Mademoiselle Vseslavitch to the same end.
This notion disquieted him greatly.