He beckoned her to draw near.
"This," he said to Natalie, "is Madame Estelle. You see, I have provided a chaperone," he remarked with something like a sneer.
Natalie looked coldly at the two, but said nothing.
Madame Estelle flushed slightly under Natalie's scornful scrutiny as she led the way into an immense dining-room.
To reach this room they had traversed a long passage, and Natalie appreciated the fact that the château was very curiously built. It consisted, indeed, of two portions, which were linked together by a long stone-flagged corridor.
Boris helped himself liberally to neat brandy, while Madame Estelle sent for a servant and told him to order tea.
Natalie had been filled with an intense foreboding as she entered the house, a foreboding which increased as she slowly recognized that she and Madame Estelle were apparently the only women in the place.
For the tea was brought in by a man, not a farmhand or an honest countryman, but a villainous-looking individual with a pock-marked face and little gold earrings in the lobes of his frost-bitten ears. He walked with his feet wide apart, and with a slightly rolling gait. He had an immense bull neck, and the hands with which he grasped the tray were large, grimy and hairy. Natalie set him down as a sailor; nor was she wrong.
When tea was over, Boris lit a cigarette, and drawing Madame Estelle on one side conversed with her for some time in whispers.
At the end of the conference between the two the woman left the room without so much as a word to Natalie or even a glance in her direction.