He had gradually approached her, and uttered the last words face to face, his eyes close to hers. She held her head up--erect, defiant still.

"So you see, madame," he said, "you belong to me."

She smiled.

"Hand and foot," he added. "But I am soft-hearted."

He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

"What will you?" he said, looking out of the window. "I love you."

"Nonsense!"

He turned slowly round.

"What?"

"Nonsense!" repeated Etta. "You love power; you are a bully. You love to please your own vanity by thinking that you have me in your power. I am not afraid of you."

De Chauxville leaned gracefully against the window. He still held his rifle.

"Reflect a little," he said, with his cold smile. "It would appear that you do not quite realize the situation. Women rarely realize situations in time. Our friend--your husband--has many of the English idiosyncrasies. He has all the narrow-minded notions of honor which obtain in that country. Added to this, I suspect him of possessing a truly Slavonic fire which he keeps under. 'A smouldering fire--' You know, madame, our French proverb. He is not the man to take a rational and broad-minded view of your little transaction with M. Vassili; more especially, perhaps, as it banished his friend Stepan Lanovitch--the owner of this house, by the way. His reception of the news I have to tell him would be unpleasant--for you."

"What do you want?" interrupted Etta. "Money?"

"I am not a needy adventurer."

"And I am not such a fool, M. de Chauxville, as to allow myself to be dragged into a vulgar intrigue, borrowed from a French novel, to satisfy your vanity."

De Chauxville's dull eyes suddenly flashed.

"I will trouble you to believe, madame," he said, in a low, concentrated voice, "that such a thought never entered my head. A De Chauxville is not a commercial traveller, if you please. No; it may surprise you, but my feeling for you has more good in it than you would seem capable of inspiring. God only knows how it is that a bad woman can inspire a good love."

Etta looked at him in amazement. She did not always understand De Chauxville. No matter for surprise, perhaps; for he did not always understand himself.

"Then what do you want?" she asked.

"In the meantime, implicit obedience."

"What are you going to use me for?"

"I have ends," replied Claude de Chauxville, who had regained his usual half-mocking composure, "that you will serve. But they will be your ends as well as mine. You will profit by them. I will take very good care that you come to no harm, for you are the ultimate object of all this.

At the end of it all I see only--you."

Etta shrugged her shoulders. It is to be presumed that she was absolutely heartless. Many women are. It is when a heartless woman has brains that one hears of her.

"What if I refuse?" asked Etta, keenly aware of the fact that this man was handicapped by his love for her.

"Then I will force you to obedience."

Etta raised her delicate eyebrows insolently.

"Ah!"

"Yes," said De Chauxville, with suppressed anger; "I will force you to obey me."

The princess looked at him with her little mocking smile. She raised one hand to her head with a reflective air, as if a hair-pin were of greater importance than his words. She had dressed herself rather carefully for this interview. She never for a moment overlooked the fact that she was a woman, and beautiful. She did not allow him to forget it either.

Her mood of outraged virtue was now suddenly thrown into the background by a phase of open coquetry. Beneath her eyelids she watched for the effect of her pretty, provoking attitude on the man who loved her. She was on her own territory at this work, playing her own game; and she was more alarmed by De Chauxville's imperturbability than by any thing he had said.

"You have a strange way of proving the truth of your own statements."

"What statements?"

She gave a little laugh. Her attitude, her glance, the cunning display of a perfect figure, the laugh, the whole woman, was the incarnation of practised coquetry. She did not admit, even to herself, that she was afraid of De Chauxville. But she was playing her best cards, in her best manner. She had never known them fail.

Claude de Chauxville was a little white about the lips. His eyelids flickered, but by an effort he controlled himself, and she did not see the light in his eyes for which she looked.

"If you mean," he said coldly, "the statement that I made to you before you were married--namely, that I love you--I am quite content to leave the proof till the future. I know what I am about, madame."

He took his watch from his pocket and consulted it.

"I must go in five minutes," he said. "I have a few instructions to give you, to which I must beg your careful attention."

He looked up, meeting Etta's somewhat sullen gaze with a smile of triumph.

"It is essential," he went on, "that I be invited to Osterno. I do not want to stay there long; indeed, I do not care to. But I must see the place. I dare say you can compass the invitation, madame?"

"It will be difficult."

"And therefore worthy of your endeavor. I have the greatest regard for your diplomatic skill. I leave the matter in your hands, princess."

Etta shrugged her shoulders and looked past him out of the window. De Chauxville was considering her face carefully.

"Another point to be remembered," he went on, "is your husband's daily life at Osterno. The prince is not above suspicion; the authorities are watching him. He is suspected of propagating revolutionary ideas among the peasantry. I should like you to find out as much as you can. Perhaps you know already. Perhaps he has told you, princess. I know that beautiful face! He has told you! Good! Does he take an interest in the peasants?"

Etta did not answer.

"Kindly give me your attention, madame. Does the prince take an interest in the peasants?"

"Yes."

"An active interest?"

"Yes."

"Have you any details?"

"No," answered Etta.