Mademoiselle Aksakoff advanced one step and her eyes probed those of the Duchess. Without words the situation was adjusted, and in Leah's favour, for the Russian suddenly sat down with a quick, indrawn breath. By that action the woman who had done the wrong knew that she was the stronger of the two, and a tyrannical instinct to bully the weak rose hotly in her breast. "What do you mean by coming at this late hour and misbehaving?" she demanded harshly. "You know well what I mean." "Pardon me, I never profess to understand the vagaries of a madwoman." At this brutal speech Katinka's hand shot into her pocket, but Leah did not move. "A weapon?" she asked sneeringly; "that would be quite in keeping with your blatant nationality. Foreigners are so fond of the melodramatic." The girl withdrew her hand quietly. "You are too poor a creature to kill, Lady James." Leah smiled at the old title, and passed the remark with a contemptuous shrug. "Later on, perhaps--who knows?" "Who indeed? It is impossible to foresee what an hysterical lunatic will do. Do you propose to shoot or stab me, or to blow me up? I understand that bombs are favoured in your happy country." The crude hostility of the speech was plainly intended to infuriate the Slav-woman, but it missed the mark aimed at. Katinka looked at the mocker gravely. "How afraid you are!" Leah shrugged again; the remark was too futile to be commented upon. "Yes, you are," went on the other, a trifle roused; "else you would have me turned out by your servants." "Later on, perhaps--who knows?" repeated the Duchess, using the girl's own words; then continued soothingly, "No; I shall not call the servants and make a scandal, since your father is my friend." "Your accomplice, Lady James." "What an unpleasant word, and how very unsuitable!" "For what you did in Paris." "I did nothing in Paris to deserve such a word. Perhaps you mean something else. You foreigners know the grammar of English, but rarely the meaning of words. I remarked the same defect in your father." "I have no father." "Indeed, I have not yet heard of his death." "Your misunderstanding of my meaning is pretence." "Ignorance, I assure you. And as it grows late and I am tired, may I ask you to explain your business?" "I can do so in one word--Demetrius." Katinka rose to give full force of expression to the name, and her voice rose with the utterance. Leah remained perfectly calm, and indulged in badinage. "Demetrius? Oh yes, that horrid little man with the waxed moustache: a doctor or a chemist, wasn't he?" "Your lover!" "Oh no. I have no use for that sort of person; if I had I should certainly not pick one out of the gutter. Demetrius? Yes," she went on musingly, but watchful of her enemy, "I had almost forgotten him. He went to St. Petersburg, didn't he? And you loved him, I remember. A queer choice I thought at the time. Well, have you married him?"