“To-morrow I go to Prince Berloff’s house party, and so do you. The reason I accepted the invitation was the opportunity offered for continuing the search, interrupted the other day, for some document revealing the whereabouts of my brother. You could help me, and help me much.” She held out her hand. “Shall it be you and I against Prince Berloff?” He pressed her hand. “You and I,” he half whispered, “against--” He checked the words that rushed to his lips, but they sounded through all his being: “Against the world!” CHAPTER XI A BARGAIN IS RENEWED The next day they all went down to Prince Berloff’s--the Howards, Sonya and her father, Countess Baronova, Drexel, the prince, and besides them half a dozen high-born men and women who, Drexel soon discovered, had the grace and polish of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, and a paste-jewel sparkle of talk, but who were just narrowness and stupidity surfaced with fine manners and fine clothes. As Drexel had anticipated, Sonya wore toward him an air of haughty negligence--an air that held no faintest hint that they were on terms of friendship, much less that between them was a secret pact. He could but compare this cold creature of imperious indifference that the world saw with the frank, glowing, inspiring and inspired woman who the afternoon before had opened her soul to him. Though his uncle drew him aside and talked traction deal, and though he nodded now and then, Drexel took in hardly one of the fortune-pregnant sentences; his mind was all with Sonya. But he did not allow himself to think of love, though all his being tingled with it. After the manner in which he had proposed to her, offering to lift her to his shining heights out of her poverty and insignificance, he hardly dare again approach the subject. Besides, for all his American pride, he felt her to be immeasurably beyond his reach. But if Sonya was distant, there was one who was not. In the latter half of the short journey Mr. Howard was summoned forward by his wife, and Drexel was following his uncle, when he was met in the corridor by Countess Baronova. “I know your uncle was sent for; are you, too, under orders?” she asked lightly, with a smile. “No.” “Then, sir, I put you under orders. Come, talk to me.” He fell in with her playful spirit, and bowed with an air that mocked the St. Petersburg courtiers. “Madame, I obey.” “Come, then.” She led the way back to a compartment in the rear of the car and they sat down facing each other. She was in a travelling gown of black velvet with long sweeping lines, and the black note was repeated with staccato effect by the studs of jet in her ears, and by her brilliant eyes; a darkly fascinating being whose gaze was open and direct, whose clear-skinned beauty was honest, owing not a tittle, as does most noble St. Petersburg beauty, to the false testimony of bleaching compounds and rouge-pots.