"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."

"He knows a great deal," admitted Maggie.

"Yes; and that is why he is sad. Is it not so?"

Catrina sat staring into the fire, her strange, earnest eyes almost fierce in their concentration.

"Did she pretend that she loved him at first?" she asked suddenly.

Receiving no answer, she looked up and fixed her searching gaze on the face of her companion. Maggie was looking straight in front of her in the direction of the fire, but not with eyes focussed to see any thing so near at hand. She bore the scrutiny without flinching. As soon as Catrina's eyes were averted the mask-like stillness of her features relaxed.

"She does not take that trouble now," added the Russian girl, in reply to her own question. "Did you see her to-night when we were at the piano? M. de Chauxville was talking to her. They were keeping two conversations going at the same time. I could see by their faces. They said different things when the music was loud. I hate her. She is not true to Paul. M. de Chauxville knows something about her. They have something in common which is not known to Paul or to any of us! Why do you not speak? Why do you sit staring into the fire with your lips so close together?"

"Because I do not think that we shall gain any thing by discussing Paul and his wife. It is no business of ours."

Catrina laughed--a lamentable, mirthless laugh.

"That is because she is your cousin; and he--he is nothing to you. You do not care whether he is happy or not!"

Catrina had turned upon her companion fiercely. Maggie swung round in her chair to pick up her bracelets, which had slipped from her knees to the floor.

"You exaggerate things," she said quietly. "I see no reason to suppose that Paul is unhappy. It is because you have taken this unreasoning dislike to her."

She took a long time to collect three bracelets. Then she rose and placed them on the dressing-table.

"Do you want me to go?" asked Catrina, in her blunt way.

"No," answered Maggie, civilly enough; but she extracted a couple of hair-pins rather obviously.

Catrina heeded the voice and not the action.

"You English are all alike," she said. "You hold one at arm's length. I suppose there is some one in England for whom you care--who is out of all this--away from all the troubles of Russia. This has nothing to do with your life. It is only a passing incident--a few weeks to be forgotten when you go back. I wonder what he is like--the man in England. You need not tell me. I am not curious in that way. I am not asking you to tell me. I am just wondering. For I know there is some one. I knew it when I first saw you. You are so quiet, and settled, and self-contained--like a person who has played a game and knows for certain that it is lost or won, and does not want to play again. Your hair is very pretty; you are very pretty, you quiet English girl. I wonder what you think about behind your steady eyes."

"I?" said Maggie, with a little laugh. "Oh--I think about my dresses, and the new fashions, and parties, and all the things that girls do think of."

Catrina shook her head. She looked stubborn and unconvinced. Then suddenly she changed the conversation.

"Do you like M. de Chauxville?" she asked.

"No."

"Does Paul like him?"

"I don't know."

Catrina looked up for a moment only. Then her eyes returned to the contemplation of the burning pine-logs.

"I wonder why you will not talk of Paul," she said, in a voice requiring no answer.

Maggie moved rather uneasily. She had her back turned toward Catrina.

"I am afraid I am rather a dull person," she answered. "I have not much to say about any body."

"And nothing about Paul?" suggested Catrina.

"Nothing. We were talking of M. de Chauxville."

"Yes; I do not understand M. de Chauxville. He seems to me to be the incarnation of insincerity. He poses--even to himself. He is always watching for the effect. I wonder what the effect of himself upon himself may be."

Maggie laughed.

"That is rather complicated," she said. "It requires working out. I think he is deeply impressed with his own astuteness. If he were simpler he would be cleverer."

Catrina was afraid of Claude de Chauxville, and, because this was so, she stared in wonder at the English girl, who dismissed him from the conversation and her thoughts with a few careless words of contempt.

Such minds as that of Miss Delafield were quite outside the field of De Chauxville's influence, while that Frenchman had considerable power over highly strung and imaginative natures.

Catrina Lanovitch had begun by tolerating him--had proceeded to make the serious blunder of permitting him to be impertinently familiar, and was now exaggerating in her own mind the hold that he had over her. She did not actually dislike him. So few people had taken the trouble or found the expediency of endeavoring to sympathize with her or understand her nature, that she was unconsciously drawn toward this man whom she now feared.

In exaggerating the power he exercised over herself she somewhat naturally exaggerated also his importance in the world and in the lives of those around him. She had imagined him all-powerful; and the first person to whom she mentioned his name dismissed the subject indifferently. Her own entire sincerity had enabled her to detect the insincerity of her ally. She had purposely made mention of the weak spot which she had discovered, in order that her observation might be corroborated. And this Maggie had failed to do.

With the slightest encouragement, Catrina would have told her companion all that had passed. The sympathy between women is so strong that there is usually only one man who is safe from discussion. In Catrina's case that one man was not Claude de Chauxville. But Maggie Delafield was of different material from this impressionable, impulsive Russian girl. She was essentially British in her capacity for steering a straight personal course through the shoals and quicksands of her neighbors' affairs, as also in the firm grip she held upon her own thoughts. She was by no means prepared to open her mind to the first comer, and in her somewhat slow-going English estimate of such matters Catrina was as yet little more than the first comer.

She changed the subject, and they talked for some time on indifferent topics--such topics as have an interest for girls; and who are we that we may despise them? We jeer very grandly at girls' talk, and promptly return to the discussion of our dogs and pipes and clothing.

But Catrina was not happy under this judicious treatment. She had no one in the world to whom she could impart a thousand doubts and questions--a hundred grievances and one great grief. And it was just this one great grief of which Maggie dreaded the mention. She was quite well aware of its existence--had been aware of it for some time. Karl Steinmetz had thrown out one or two vague hints; everything pointed to it. Maggie could hardly be ignorant of the fact that Catrina had grown to womanhood loving Paul.