Her face was pale and distressed, the black beaver hat falling carelessly over her tangled curls, her pelisse was roughly dragged together with a silver clasp fastened crookedly, and she wore her thin house shoes which were slightly stained with dirty snow.
“Come, child,” said Aurora kindly. “This grief and agitation are useless. Nothing has happened.”
“Things are terrible,” replied Hélène in a low, hurried voice. “You know yourself that all goes as if to disaster. The armies broken, the country in a turmoil--and he is leaving me.”
On these childish words a sob broke her voice, and tears filled her eyes already reddened with weeping.
She seemed indifferent to the presence of the Countess and the two chamber women, and continued to stare into the fire, raising her clasped trembling hands to her quivering lips while the tears fell on to her knuckles.
Aurora wanted to say “Patkul is safe,” but the words stuck in her throat, even though she quieted her conscience by the resolve that by some underhand means the Livonian must be saved.
She shivered a little in her warm coat, and spread out her fair hands to the fire.
“It is hard for all of us,” she said evenly. “Do you think, dear, that I like Varsovia? And as for the Elector he is more ill-natured than I have ever known him; I wish he would go to the war and rid me of his moods. These wretched Poles are giving a great deal of trouble, and there is no denying that for the moment the King of Sweden has the advantage.”
“Patkul thinks there is no hope at all for Livonia,” murmured Hélène. “He saw in the battle of the Dwina what these Swedes are.”
“I think my countrymen are tolerably good soldiers,” said the Countess.
The Saxon girl disliked her for this remark, and turned away abruptly; the beautiful, comfortable room seemed to her hateful; she ran to the door, pulled it open, and fled down the dark stairs; she heard the Countess’s voice half-laughing, half-angry, raised in protest, but she took no heed; nothing mattered to her now in the world but the fact that she must see her lover again before a separation that, some dreadful premonition told her, would be long if not eternal.
She could not explain to herself why she was so terrified and overwrought; this love of hers, born amid the tumults of wars and factions, had known many bitter partings and long absences, but youthful hope and joy had hitherto kept her immune from the terrors that assailed her to-night. She must see him again; it was as if her body moved without motion, so strong was the force of the spirit within, as if the cold night air carried her, a disembodied creature, to his side.