“Yes,” said Catrina mechanically; “it is the snow.”

She went toward the door, and there she paused.

“Does Paul love her?” she asked abruptly.

Maggie made no answer; and, as was her habit, Catrina replied to her own question.

“You know he does not—­you know he does not!” she said.

Then she went out, without waiting for an answer, closing the door behind her.  The closed door heard the reply.

“It will not matter much,” said Maggie, “so long as he never finds it out.”

CHAPTER XXX

WOLF!

The Countess Lanovitch never quitted her own apartments before mid-day.  She had acquired a Parisian habit of being invisible until luncheon-time.  The two girls left the castle of Thors in a sleigh with one attendant at ten o’clock in order to reach the hut selected for luncheon by mid-day.  Etta did not accompany them.  She had a slight headache.

At eleven o’clock Claude de Chauxville returned alone, on horseback.  After the sportsmen had separated, each to gain his prearranged position in the forest, he had tripped over his rifle, seriously injuring the delicate sighting mechanism.  He found (he told the servant who opened the door for him) that he had just time to return for another rifle before the operation of closing in on the bears was to begin.

“If Madame the Princess,” was visible, he went on, would the servant tell her that M. de Chauxville was waiting in the library to assure her that there was absolutely no danger to be anticipated in the day’s sport.  The princess, it would appear, was absurdly anxious about the welfare of her husband—­an experienced hunter and a dead shot.

Claude de Chauxville then went to the library, where he waited, booted, spurred, rifle in hand, for Etta.

After a lapse of five minutes or more, the door was opened, and Etta came leisurely into the room.

“Well?” she enquired indifferently.

De Chauxville bowed.  He walked past her and closed the door, which she happened to have left open.

Then he returned and stood by the window, leaning gracefully on his rifle.  His attitude, his hunting-suit, his great top-boots, made rather a picturesque object of him.

“Well?” repeated Etta, almost insolently.

“It would have been wiser to have married me,” said De Chauxville darkly.

Etta shrugged her shoulders.

“Because I understand you better; I know you better than your husband.”

Etta turned and glanced at the clock.

“Have you come back from the bear-hunt to tell me this, or to avoid the bears?” she asked.

De Chauxville frowned.  A man who has tasted fear does not like a question of his courage.

“I have come to tell you that and other things,” he answered.

He looked at her with his sinister smile and a little upward jerk of the head.  He extended his open hand, palm upward, with the fingers slightly crooked.