“Little star, you must never speak to me like that again, as you did just now, I mean.  It was unreasonable and not kind, if you but knew!  And I have a very arrogant temper, I fear, although I am nearly master of it, and shall be quite in time, I hope.  We might have parted then and spoilt both our lives.  Won’t you believe me that I love—­I adore you!” he went on tenderly.  “I am madly longing to be for you the most passionate lover a woman ever had.  It is only for your sake and for honor and our future happiness that I restrain myself now.  You see I am not an Englishman who can accept half-measures.  Do not make it impossible for me, sweet love!”

His voice was almost a sob in its deep notes of pleading, and Stella was touched.

“Oh! you are so dear and great,” she answered fondly.  “I am perhaps very wicked to have tempted you.  If it would be wrong for you to kiss me, which I cannot understand, it is—­oh, it is because I love you like that, too!”

At this ingenuous admission, passion nearly overcame him again, and he held her so tightly it seemed as if he must crush out her very breath.  Then he put her from him and walked toward the door.

“I dare not stay another second,” he said, in a strangled voice.  “Ivan will guard your room, and my sister will come to you soon.  Do as I tell you, beloved one, and then all will be well.”

With which he opened the door, and left her standing by the sofa quivering with a strange joy and perplexity—­and some other wild emotion of which she had not dreamed.

CHAPTER VIII

It seemed an endless time the hour that she waited in her room, and then a knock came to the door, and Ivan’s voice saying his master desired her presence in the sitting-room at once, and she hurriedly went there to find Count Roumovski standing by the mantelpiece looking very grave.

“Stella,” he said, “there has been an accident to the train my sister was to have arrived by—­it is not serious, but she cannot be here now until the early morning perhaps—­unless I send the automobile to Viterbo for her.  The line is blocked by a broken-down goods train which caused the disaster,” he paused a moment, and Stella said, “Well?” rather anxiously.

“It will be impossible for us to remain here,” he continued, “because it may be that your relations, aided by the Embassy, will have traced us before then, and if they should come upon us alone together, nothing that I could say or prove could keep the situation from looking compromising,”—­he now spoke with his old calm, and Stella felt her confidence reviving.  He would certainly arrange what was best for them, she could rely upon that.

“What must we do then?” she asked gently, while she put her head on the sleeve of his coat.

“I will wrap you up in the fur cloak, darling,” he said, “and you must come in the automobile with me to meet Anastasia.  Your family must not find you again until your are in my sister’s company.  We ought to start at once.”