Etta listened, and despite herself she became interested.  She was sitting in a chair usually occupied by Steinmetz.  There was a faint aroma of tobacco-smoke.  The atmosphere of the room was manly and energetic.

Paul showed her his simple stores of medicine—­the old coat saturated with disinfectants which had become the recognized outward sign of the Moscow doctor.

“And do other people, other noblemen, try to do this sort of thing too?” asked Etta at length.

“Catrina Lanovitch does,” replied Paul.

“What?  The girl with the hair?”

“Yes,” answered Paul.  He had never noticed Catrina’s hair.  Etta’s appraising eye had seen more in one second than Paul had perceived in twenty years.

“Yes,” he answered.  “But, of course, she is handicapped.”

“By her appearance?”

“No; by her circumstances.  Her name is sufficient to handicap her every moment in this country.  But she does a great deal.  She—­she found me out, confound her!”

Etta had risen; she was looking curiously at the cupboard where Paul’s infected clothes were hanging.  He had forbidden her to go near it.  She turned and looked at him.

“Found you out!  How?” she asked, with a queer smile.

“Saw through my disguise.”

“Yes—­she would do that!” said Etta aloud to herself.

“What is this door?” she asked, after a pause.

“It leads to an inner room,” replied Paul, “where Steinmetz usually works.”

He passed in front of her and opened the door.  As he was doing so Etta went on in the train of her thoughts: 

“So Catrina knows?”

“Yes.”

“And no one else?”

Paul made no answer; for he had passed on into the smaller room, where Steinmetz was seated at a writing-table.

“Except, of course, Herr Steinmetz?” Etta went on interrogatively.

“Madame,” said the German, looking up with his pleasant smile, “I know every thing.”

And he went on writing.

CHAPTER XXVI

BLOODHOUNDS

The table d’hote of the Hotel de Moscou at Tver had just begun.  The soup had been removed; the diners were engaged in igniting their first cigarette at the candles placed between each pair of them for that purpose.  By nature the modern Russian is a dignified and somewhat reserved gentleman.  By circumstance he has been schooled into a state of guarded unsociability.  If there is a seat at a public table conveniently removed from those occupied by earlier arrivals the new-comer invariably takes it.  In Russia one converses—­as in Scotland one jokes—­with difficulty.