“After a little while she seemed to feel herself that she was lacking in cordiality, and, bringing her absent gaze to bear upon me with a puzzled strained look:  ‘I fear you will find it very dull,’ she said, ’my husband is so wrapped up this winter in his country life and his sport.  You are the first visitor we have had.  There is nothing but guns and horses here, and you do not care for these things.’

“The door creaked behind us; and the baron entered, in faultless evening dress.  Before she turned toward him I was sharp enough to catch again the upleaping of a quick dread in her eyes, not even so much dread perhaps, I thought afterwards, as horror—­the horror we notice in some animals at the nearing of a beast of prey.  It was gone in a second, and she was smiling.  But it was a revelation.

“Perhaps he beat her in Russian fashion, and she, as an Englishwoman, was narrow-minded enough to resent this; or perhaps, merely, I had the misfortune to arrive during a matrimonial misunderstanding.

“The baron would not give me leisure to reflect; he was so very effusive in his greeting—­not a hint of our previous meeting—­unlike my hostess, all in all to me; eager to listen, to reply; almost affectionate, full of references to old times and genial allusions.  No doubt when he chose he could be the most charming of men; there were moments when, looking at him in his quiet smile and restrained gesture, the almost exaggerated politeness of his manner to his wife, whose fingers he had kissed with pretty, old-fashioned gallantry upon his entrance, I asked myself, Could that encounter in the passage have been a dream?  Could that savage in the sheepskin be my courteous entertainer?

“Just as I came in, did I hear my wife say there was nothing for you to do in this place?” he said presently to me.  Then, turning to her: 

“You do not seem to know Mr. Marshfield.  Wherever he can open his eyes there is for him something to see which might not interest other men.  He will find things in my library which I have no notion of.  He will discover objects for scientific observation in all the members of my household, not only in the good-looking maids—­though he could, I have no doubt, tell their points as I could those of a horse.  We have maidens here of several distinct races, Marshfield.  We have also witches, and Jew leeches, and holy daft people.  In any case, Yany, with all its dependencies, material, male and female, are at your disposal, for what you can make out of them.

“’It is good,” he went on gayly, ’that you should happen to have this happy disposition, for I fear that, no later than to-morrow, I may have to absent myself from home.  I have heard that there are news of wolves—­they threaten to be a greater pest than usual this winter, but I am going to drive them on quite a new plan, and it will go hard with me if I don’t come even with them.  Well for you, by the way, Marshfield, that you did not pass within their scent to-day.’  Then, musingly:  ’I should not give much for the life of a traveler who happened to wander in these parts just now.’  Here he interrupted himself hastily and went over to his wife, who had sunk back on her chair, livid, seemingly on the point of swooning.