“_À qui le dites vous!_” muttered Salvières, and continued, louder: “As luck will have it, your brother is in China or thereabouts, and it is not likely that he will hear of this for the present. Meanwhile, it seems to me that we should hurry our departure. Régis and I may be needed at any moment--indispensable, in fact. It stands to reason that that infernal woman will not turn her yacht’s nose toward the North Sea or any Mediterranean port. If you believe me she’s off to the States or to South America--and I wish it were the devil!” he wrathfully concluded. “So do I,” assented Pavlo. “Between all of them they are worrying my little mother to pieces.” “Nonsense!” protested Tatiana. “But it is true that this woman is really occupying too much room on the stage. Can’t she keep quiet? And Preston Wynne, we all took such a fancy to him when he came with Sir Robert and Lady Elizabeth to Salvières two years ago. He was so gay, so amusing--by no manner of means the type of man one would expect to sacrifice his whole future for a worthless woman like Laurence.” “Queer! He told me once he didn’t approve of divorce,” put in Salvières. “I distinctly remember his saying so, and even denouncing rather vividly the laxity in that respect in his own country. What’s he going to do with her? I wonder if she’ll ask him to marry her--and she by birth a Catholic and now an Orthodox? D’you think that after embracing so much she’ll end by embracing Protestantism as a much-needed ally?” “Jean! But you are right. There’s no knowing what will happen now. What a pity! _Le petit_ Wynne was a rarity! He knew how to behave; knew how to move about a drawing-room; knew how to eat and how not to drink too much; knew how to present himself and take leave; knew that one does not wear colored gaiters with a cut-away coat and a top-hat; knew that a boudoir is not a bedroom, but a--_boude-heure_--a place to go and sulk by the hour--which makes me think I’ve got a fine large one here, and at Salvières, too. It will come in useful to me now.” “You--useful to you!” exclaimed Pavlo. Running to his mother and throwing his arm about her slim waist, he kissed her little flushed ear. “You sulk! I’d like to see you just once. It isn’t in your power. You simply can’t!” “Oh, leave me alone!” she objected, but in a greatly mollified tone. “You are a _Schmeichler_; and what am I going to do without you, ‘Polo,’ during all these long months to come?” There were tears in her eyes, and she turned almost brutally to conceal them; but her voice betrayed her, and in an instant the lad was humbly pleading for forgiveness. “Oh, mother darling,” he said, contritely, catching hold of her again, “I was a brute this afternoon. Of course I can obtain leave. What do they want with a kid like me? I was only showing off. I’ll come with you and Papa if you’ll let me, and glad enough I’ll be, my own pretty mother dear.”