“Mother,” she said, “shall I ring for tea?”

When the countess awoke, De Chauxville was turning over some sheets of music at the piano.

CHAPTER XXIII

A WINTER SCENE

Between Petersburg and the sea there are several favorite islands more or less assigned to the foreigners residing in the Russian capital.  Here the English live, and in summer the familiar cries of the tennis-lawn may be heard, while in winter snow-shoeing, skating, and tobogganing hold merry sway.

It was here, namely, on the island of Christeffsky, that a great ice fete was held on the day preceding the departure of the Howard Alexis household for Tver.  The fete was given by one of the foreign ambassadors—­a gentleman whose wife was accredited to the first place in Petersburg society.  It was absolutely necessary, Steinmetz averred, for the whole Howard Alexis party to put in an appearance.

The fete was supposed to begin at four in the afternoon, and by five o’clock all St. Petersburg—­all, c’est a dire, worthy of mention in that aristocratic city—­had arrived.  One may be sure Claude de Chauxville arrived early, in beautiful furs with a pair of silver-plated skates under his arm.  He was an influential member of the Cercle des Patineurs in Paris.  Steinmetz arrived soon after, to look on, as he told his many friends.  He was, he averred, too stout to skate and too heavy for the little iron sleds on the ice-hills.

“No, no!” he said, “there is nothing left for me but to watch.  I shall watch De Chauxville,” he added, turning to that graceful skater with a grim smile.  De Chauxville nodded and laughed.

“You have been doing that any time this twenty years, mon ami,” he said, as he stood upright on his skates and described an easy little figure on the outside edge backward.

“And have always found you on slippery ground.”

“And never a fall,” said De Chauxville over his shoulder, as he shot away across the brilliantly lighted pond.

It was quite dark.  A young moon was rising over the city, throwing out in dark relief against the sky a hundred steeples and domes.  The long, thin spire of the Fortress Church—­the tomb of the Romanoffs—­shot up into the heavens like a dagger.  Near at hand, a thousand electric lights and colored lanterns, cunningly swung on the branches of the pines, made a veritable fairyland.  The ceaseless song of the skates, on ice as hard as iron, mingled with the strains of a band playing in a kiosk with open windows.  From the ice-hills came the swishing scream of the iron runners down the terrific slope.  The Russians are a people of great emotions.  There is a candor in their recognition of the needs of the senses which does not obtain in our self-conscious nature.  These strangely constituted people of the North—­a budding nation, a nation which shall some day overrun the world—­are easily intoxicated.  And there is a deliberation about their methods of seeking this enjoyment which appears at times almost brutal.  There is nothing more characteristic than the ice-hill.