"His name? No! I cannot tell it; at least--not--not to you; though others know it. Nay," she added, wildly, "even Russakoff, the spy, can taunt me with it in the public street."
"Others know it, even Russakoff?" repeated Zabern. "And yet you would keep the name from me? Well, be it so," he added reproachfully. "I should have thought, Katina, that you would have let your old friend, the marshal, be the first to congratulate you."
Strange that Zabern, so quick to divine the plans of his enemies, should be so dull at reading a woman's heart! Yet so it was. He really had not the least idea as to the cause of Katina's agitation. He thought it behoved him to find out. He had nursed her as a child on his knee, and now with the tender familiarity of an old friend he placed his hand beneath her chin, and though she attempted a faint resistance, he succeeded in raising her drooping face to his own. The strange wistful look in her dark eyes that met his for a moment only, and then fell again, was a complete revelation to the marshal. It told her secret as clearly as if she had spoken it.
"Katina!" he murmured, huskily, quitting his hold of her, and starting back.
Katina herself sank on a seat silently and with averted face, the very picture of confusion.
If silence gives assent, then Katina had assented.
There was a brief interval of silence. Then the affair seemed to present itself in a humorous light to the marshal, for he began to laugh.
"You love me! Me! the greatest knave in Czernova! a one-handed grim old fellow like myself, twice your age, with an ugly face, made--thanks to the Russians!--still more ugly by sabre-cuts. You have a strange taste, Katina, when there is many a young and handsome Pole willing to make you his bride."
"But none like Zabern," she murmured, yet hardly daring to say the words.
Though the marshal looked upon Katina as the fairest maiden in Czernova after the princess, yet the thought of wooing her had never entered his head; but now, while he contemplated her as she trembled like a leaf, looking the more charming in her confusion, the grim old warrior felt within himself a power unfelt till that moment.
"Katina," he said, and never before had she heard his voice sound so gentle,--"Katina, you may kiss me--if you like."