Maggie looked up with a smile which slowly ebbed away.  Catrina’s remark was of the nature of a defiance.  Her half-diffident role of hostess was suddenly laid aside.

“No; she does not,” answered the English girl.

Catrina came forward, standing over Maggie, looking down at her with eyes full of antagonism.

“Excuse me.  I saw her understand a remark I made to one of the servants.  She was not careful.  I saw it distinctly.”

“I think you must be mistaken,” answered Maggie quietly.  “She has been in Russia before for a few weeks; but she did not learn the language.  She told me so herself.  Why should she pretend not to know Russian, if she does?”

Catrina made no answer.  She sat heavily down in the vacant chair.  Her attitudes were uncouth and strong—­a perpetual source of tribulation to the countess.  She sat with her elbow on her knee, staring into the fire.

“I did not mean to hate her; I did not want to,” she said.  “If it had been you, I should not have hated you.”

Maggie’s clear eyes wavered for a moment.  A faint color rose to her face.  She leaned back so that the firelight did not reach her.  There was a silence, during which Maggie unclasped a bracelet with a little snap of the spring.  Catrina did not hear the sound.  She heard nothing.  She did not appear to be aware of her surroundings.  Maggie unclasped another bracelet noisily.  She was probably regretting her former kindness of manner.  Catrina had come too near.

“Are you not judging rather hastily?” suggested Maggie, in a measured voice which heightened the contrast between the two.  “I find it takes some time to discover whether one likes or dislikes new acquaintances.”

“Yes; but you English are so cold and deliberate.  You do not know what it is to hate—­or to care.”

“Perhaps we do,” said Maggie; “but we say less about it.”

Catrina turned and looked at her with a queer smile.

“Less!” she laughed.  “Nothing—­you say nothing.  Paul is the same.  I have seen.  I know.  You have said nothing since you came to Thors.  You have talked and laughed; you have given opinions; you have spoken of many things, but you have said nothing.  You are the same as Paul—­one never knows.  I know nothing about you.  But I like you.  You are her cousin?”

“Yes.”

“And I hate her!”

Maggie laughed.  She was quite steady and loyal.

“When you get to know her you will change, perhaps,” she said.

“Perhaps I know her now better than you do!”

Maggie laughed in her cheery, practical way.

“That seems hardly likely, considering that I have known her since we were children.”

Catrina shrugged her shoulders in an honest if somewhat mannerless refusal to discuss the side issue.  She returned to the main question with characteristic stubbornness.

“I shall always hate her,” she said.  “I am sorry she is your cousin.  I shall always regret that, and I shall always hate her.  There is something wrong about her—­something none of you know except Karl Steinmetz.  He knows every thing—­Herr Steinmetz.”