But as yet she showed no disposition to speak frankly, for the Russian, in Jim's picturesque speech, was a gentleman to be handled "with the gloves on." Jim himself had impressed this on Leah, before he sat down to spell out _The Woman in White_. Needless to say, this unusual effort to improve what Jim was pleased to term his mind bored him extremely. "Not a word about racin'," grumbled Jim, skipping page after page. Still, as Leah pointed out the necessity of poaching on the domain of fiction, Jim sat at his lesson like a good little boy, and his wife drove out with her proposed victim. That the irony of fate might change the victim into a possible tyrant did not occur to Leah at the moment. All the same, she was careful not to commit herself too hastily, and for two miles talked society-journal paragraphs with an assiduity at once boring and perplexing to Demetrius. Even when the sledge slipped, silent and ghost-like, over an Arctic waste, and they were alone to babble secrets to a frosty sky, Leah showed no disposition to come to the point. She wished Demetrius to question her, and then, by seeing into his mind, she could be guided as to the most selfishly-successful way of making up her own. But the doctor guessed her reason for this diplomatic silence, and knowing what a shameless capacity she had for word-twisting and for slipping out of untenable positions, he gave her no opportunity to overlook his hand. It was certainly, as he reflected, a game of skill, but what the precise style of game might be Demetrius could not guess. However, one thing was certain; this game, like all others, was being played for money. On Lady Jim's part, that is. Demetrius shuffled his cards for the stake of love, and so, having Leah Kaimes for an antagonist, lost at the outset. A game between a man and a woman, on amatory grounds, is always unequal. The one in earnest invariably loses. "Does this remind you of the steppes?" asked Leah, waving her whip towards a desert of snow and ice. The polite conversation was still much in evidence. "Somewhat, madame; but I cannot remember sledging across any steppe in such charming company." "Ah! You have never driven Mademoiselle Aksakoff, then?" "It is a pleasure yet to come." "In Russia?" "Why not? She may induce her father to make my peace with the Czar." "You would be pleased?" Demetrius shrugged his spare shoulders, and replied in the evasive manner which characterised this conversation on the part of both. "I am well content with England," he remarked calmly. "Many people are pleasant, and all agreeable. Also, the Duke pays me well--too well, considering he is my solitary patient." "I never knew a physician to quarrel with his fees before," laughed Lady Jim, flicking the ponies lightly; "and you have another patient, I understand--Mr. Kaimes said something about it."