And
although she knew that in the letter this was false, she did not
contradict him. "I came here to claim fulfilment of your promise."
The hard blue eyes beneath the fur cap stared straight in front of them.
Catrina seemed to be driving like one asleep, for she noted nothing by
the roadside. So far as eye could reach over the snow-clad plain,
through the silent pines, these two were alone in a white, dead world of
their own. Catrina never drove with bells. There was no sound beyond the
high-pitched drone of the steel runners over the powdery snow. They were
alone; unseen, unheard save of that Ear that listens in the waste places
of the world.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Oh, not very much!" answered De Chauxville--a cautious man, who knew a
woman's humor. Catrina driving a pair of ponies in the clear, sharp air
of Central Russia, and Catrina playing the piano in the enervating,
flower-scented atmosphere of a drawing-room, were two different women.
De Chauxville was not the man to mistake the one for the other.
"Not very much, mademoiselle," he answered. "I should like Mme. la
Comtesse to invite the whole Osterno party to dine, and sleep, perhaps,
if one may suggest it."
Catrina wanted this too. She wanted to torture herself with the sight of
Etta, beautiful, self-confident, carelessly cognizant of Paul's love.
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