"He is gone--gone--and perhaps I shall never see him again!" She sank on her knees and buried her face in the cushions of the window-seat. Her whole frame shook with the sobs that would no longer be suppressed.
Five minutes later George Crofton entered the room. For a few seconds he paused in utter amazement; then going forward, he laid a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Steph," he said, "Steph--why, what's amiss?" As he spoke his eyes rested for a moment on Picot and Henri, who were crossing the grass-plat hand in hand.
"Pardon. I hope I do not intrude?" said M. Karovsky, addressing himself to Mrs. Brooke with the suave assurance of a thorough man of the world. "I saw through the window that Mr. Brooke had returned, and as my time here is limited--_me voici_." Then advancing a few steps and holding out his hand to Gerald, he added: "It is five years, _mon ami_, since we last met. Confess now, I am one of the last men in the world whom you thought to see here?"
"You are indeed, Karovsky," responded Gerald as he shook his visitor's proffered hand, but with no great show of cordiality.--"Have you been long in England?"
"Not long. I am a bird of passage. I come and go, and obey the orders that are given me. That is all."
"My wife, Mrs. Brooke. But you have seen her already.--Clara, Monsieur Karovsky is a gentleman whose acquaintance I had the honour of making during the time I was living abroad."
"May we hope to have the pleasure of Monsieur Karovsky's company to dinner?" asked Clara in her most gracious manner, while at the same time hoping in her heart that the invitation would not be accepted.
"_Merci_, madame," responded the Russian, for such he was. "I should be delighted, if the occasion admitted of it; but, as I said before, my time is limited. I must leave London by the night-mail. I am due in Paris at ten o'clock tomorrow."
"For the present, then, I must ask you to excuse me," said Clara.
Karovsky hastened to open the door for her, and bowed low as she swept out of the room.
"That man is the bearer of ill news, and Gerald knows it," was the young wife's unspoken thought as she left the two together.
M. Karovsky was a tall, well-built man, to all appearance some few years over thirty in point of age. His short black hair was parted carefully down the middle; his black eyes were at once piercing and brilliant; he had a long and rather thin face, a longish nose, a mobile and flexible mouth, and a particularly fine arrangement of teeth. He wore neither beard nor moustache, and his complexion had the faint yellow tint of antique ivory. He was not especially handsome; but there was something striking and out of the common in his appearance, so that people who were introduced to him casually in society wanted to know more about him. An enigma is not without its attractions for many people, and Karovsky had the air of being one whether he was so in reality or not. He was a born linguist, as so many of his countrymen are, and spoke the chief European languages with almost equal fluency and equal purity of accent.