“Ah!  Bad example!” exclaimed the countess playfully.  “You are there!  I did not see you enter.  And who is that friend?”

“The fair lady who looks at you from your mirror,” replied Steinmetz, with a face of stone.

The countess laughed and shook her cap to one side.

“Well,” she said, “I can do no harm in talking of such things, as I know nothing of them.  My poor husband—­my poor mistaken Stepan—­placed no confidence in his wife.  And now he is in Siberia.  I believe he works in a bootmaker’s shop.  I pity the people who wear the boots; but perhaps he only puts in the laces.  You hear, Paul?  He placed no confidence in his wife, and now he is in Siberia.  Let that be a warning to you—­eh, princess?  I hope he tells you everything.”

“Put not your trust in princesses,” said Steinmetz from the hearth-rug, where he was still warming his hands, for he had driven Maggie over.  “It says so in the Bible.”

“Princes, profane one!” exclaimed the countess with a laugh—­“princes, not princesses!”

“It may be so.  I bow to your superior literary attainments,” replied Steinmetz, looking casually and significantly at a pile of yellow-backed foreign novels on a side-table.

“No,” the countess went on, addressing her conversation to Etta; “no, my husband—­figure to yourself, princess—­told me nothing.  I never knew that he was implicated in this great scheme.  I do not know now who else was concerned in it.  It was all so sudden, so unexpected, so terrible.  It appears that he kept the papers in this very house—­in that room through there.  It was his study—­”

“My dear countess, silence!” interrupted Steinmetz at this moment, breaking into the conversation in his masterful way and enabling Etta to get away.  Catrina, at the other end of the room, was listening, hard-eyed, breathless.  It was the sight of Catrina’s face that made Steinmetz go forward.  He had not been looking at Catrina, but at Etta, who was perfect in her composure and steady self-control.

“Do you want to enter the boot trade also?” asked Steinmetz cheerfully, in a lowered voice.

“Heaven forbid!” cried the countess.

“Then let us talk of safer things.”

The short twilight was already brooding over the land.  The room, lighted only by small square windows, grew darker and darker until Catrina rang for lamps.

“I hate a dark room,” she said shortly to Maggie.

When De Chauxville came in, a few minutes later, Catrina was at the piano.  The room was brilliantly lighted, and on the table gleamed and glittered the silver tea-things.  The intermediate meal had been disposed of, but the samovar had been left alight, as is the habit at Russian afternoon teas.

Catrina looked up when the Frenchman entered, but did not cease playing.

“There is no need for introductions, I think,” said the countess.

“We all know M. de Chauxville,” replied Paul quietly, and the two men exchanged a glance.