“A charming man!” ejaculated the countess, before the door was well closed.

“A fool!” corrected Catrina.

“I do not think you can say that, dear,” sighed the countess, more in sorrow than in anger.

“A clever one,” answered Catrina.  “There is a difference.  The clever ones are the worst.”

The countess shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, and Catrina left the room.  She went upstairs to her own little den, where the piano stood.  It was the only room in the house that was not too warm, for here the window was occasionally opened—­a proceeding which the countess considered scarcely short of criminal.

Catrina began to play, feverishly, nervously, with all the weird force of her nature.  She was like a very sick person seeking a desperate remedy—­racing against time.  It was her habit to take her breaking heart thus to the great masters, to interpret their thoughts in their music, welding their melodies to the needs of her own sorrow.  She only had half an hour.  Of late music had failed her a little.  It had not given her the comfort she had usually extracted from solitude and the piano.  She was in a dangerous humor.  She was afraid of trusting herself to De Chauxville.  The time fled, and her humor did not change.  She was still playing when the door opened, and the countess stood before her flushed and angry, either or both being the effect of stairs upon emotion.

“Catrina!” the elder lady exclaimed.  “The sleigh is at the door, and the count is waiting.  I cannot tell what you are thinking of.  It is not every-body who would be so attentive to you.  Just look at your hair.  Why can’t you dress like other girls?”

“Because I am not made like other girls,” replied Catrina—­and who knows what bitterness of reproach there was in such an answer from daughter to mother?

“Hush, child,” replied the countess, whose anger usually took the form of personal abuse.  “You are as the good God made you.”

“Then the good God must have made me in the dark,” cried Catrina, flinging out of the room.

“She will be down directly,” said the Countess Lanovitch to De Chauxville, whom she found smoking a cigarette in the hall.  “She naturally—­he! he!—­wishes to make a careful toilet.”

De Chauxville bowed gravely, without committing himself to any observation, and offered her a cigarette, which she accepted.  Having achieved his purpose, he did not now propose to convey the impression that he admired Catrina.

In a few moments the girl appeared, drawing on her fur gloves.  Before the door was opened the countess discreetly retired to the enervating warmth of her own apartments.

Catrina gathered up the reins and gave a little cry, at which the ponies leaped forward, and in a whirl of driven snow the sleigh glided off between the pines.

At first there was no opportunity of conversation, for the ponies were fresh and troublesome.  The road over which they were passing had not been beaten down by the passage of previous sleighs, so that the powdery snow rose up like dust, and filled the eyes and mouth.