Basil took a fresh cigarette, lighted it from the still burning stump on the tray, and gazed for a moment at the ends of his pumps, as though noticing something amiss with those irreproachable articles of footwear. “Do you think,” he suddenly asked, with apparent irrelevance, “that perhaps I did a foolish, an unwise, or even a cruel thing in separating her from her friends, her country, her pleasures, and in bringing her to live at Tverna?” “A woman shall forsake her family, her land, and her own surroundings, to cleave to her husband, quoth Holy Scripture!” Salvières pronounced, severely. “It does nothing of the kind! It is the other way about. It is the husband who is particularly mentioned,” Basil contradicted, unable to repress a smile. “Oh! It works both ways undoubtedly! Behold me, who spend neatly the half of every year over here. Besides, not being me, or an Irishman, I presume it isn’t your intention to become an absentee landlord?” “No, naturally not, but I do not think Laurence likes Russia. She does not complain, you understand, but I cannot help noticing--” “I believe you, my boy,” commented Salvières, inwardly. And then as the pause threatened to draw to an embarrassing length, he quietly remarked: “She’ll get used to the change after a while, never fear. Women are eminently adaptable, and, given the merely nominal duties she will encounter, and the enormous advantages that will counterbalance these, you ought not to worry yourself about the result!” “But that is just the devil of it!” Basil exclaimed. “She does not understand those duties you are pleased to call nominal, but are as a matter of fact very serious. She’s afraid--I honestly believe--of the people! You see, she has heard all her life in England that we Russians are a bloodthirsty, violent race, capable of any evil; so what will you? Poor child, the isolation, perhaps even the ‘grandeur’ of her new position, are weighing upon her!” “Nonsense! Who’s afraid?” Salvières said, with some irritation. “She, the daughter of a line of sailors and soldiers, the granddaughter of that old fire-eater, Admiral Seton, the ‘Orror of the Horient--as they nicknamed him at Alexandria! Bah! Try and make some one else believe that!”