"I find it humiliating that you should have to barter your favours to pay my debts."
"I promised him no favours." "By inference you certainly did."
She shrugged. "That I'll admit; but they will be only what I choose to give."
"Think you so? Once you present that Russian with a fair field to set about you, I'd give little for your chances of receiving quarter."
"Oh, Roger, why must you dramatise the matter so? You are acting like a romantic schoolboy and talking to me as if I were a girl in her first season. I'll pay your debt in my own fashion, but there will be no sordidness about the transaction, as you suggest."
"Yet you would not have offered him an opening so soon; had it not been for my predicament."
"Perhaps not; but since you press the point, your own conduct has brought matters to a head more speedily than I expected."
"If you admit that, 'tis as good as admitting that you are selling yourself to pay my debt, and therein lies my humiliation."
Georgina drew herself up. "How dare you suggest that I would sell myself for a paltry three hundred pounds!"
" 'Tis not the money but the principle of the thing. You know as well as I that you have made an unspoken bargain with the man and are by nature too honest to go back upon it."
"I tell you that I have made no bargain! The Russian has taken a gamble on my good-will, no more. He may count himself lucky if I allow him to kiss me good-night."
Roger's laugh rang with angry scorn. "Is it likely that he will be content with that?"
"I do not know, and I do not care," Georgina flared. "I told you this morning that what I had seen of him in London had predisposed me in his favour. On closer acquaintance I find him both intelligent and amusing. Therefore I pray you disabuse yourself of this notion that anything I may choose to do will be done on account of your own folly. Both political interest and my own inclination conspire in urging me to favour his suit. In the circumstances, it seemed to me that if by accelerating matters a little I could also cancel out this wretched debt of yours, I should be doing you a service. Now, Sir, I pray you take me within doors again."
Roger bowed stiffly. "Since those are your sentiments, Madam, no more remains to be said." Then he offered her his arm, and in stony silence escorted her back to the drawing-room.
It was now close on midnight, and within a few moments of their reappearance the company declared for bed. Going out into the hall they lit their respective candles, and having mounted the broad staircase in a body, separated on the landing with a chorus of "good nights."
Georgina and Vorontzoff turned to the right. Roger, following a few paces behind, saw them pass the door of her bedroom and enter the next one to it, which led* into her boudoir. As he passed it the door closed behind them. Biting his lip, he ^walked on down the corridor to the third door in the row, that of Sir Humphrey Etheredge's room, which he was occupying; and, going in slammed it behind him with a loud bang.
In the boudoir Vorontzoff had just completed the lighting of a three-branched candelabra that stood on an occasional table at the head of the golden day-bed. As the slam reverberated through the room he shot a quick look at the communicating door, then smiled at Georgina. " 'Twas young Mr. Brook behind us just now, was it not? He seems to have sought his bed in something of a temper."
She made a little face. "Poor fellow! He sets considerable store on his privilege of lighting me to bed and was most loath to surrender it, even for the cancellation of his debt."
"That I can well understand, Madame. And lest it trouble him so much as to cause him to walk in his sleep we will take due precaution that he should not disturb you."
As he spoke the Russian took three swift steps towards the communicating door and shot its bolt; then he turned to face her again and gave her a long steady look.
He was not as tall as Roger but broader in the shoulders, and all his movements denoted a quick, determined mind. His flatfish face was saved from ugliness by its strength, and the upward slope of his dark eyebrows at their outer ends gave him a faint resemblance to a satyr.
Georgina, faintly smiling, returned his look. She was intensely curious to know what line he would take with her. In such a situation the usual technique of the day was. for the gallant to pour out a stream of wildly exaggerated compliments, beseech the f auto take pity on him, and falling on his knees before her, vow that he would commit suicide unless she salved the sweet but deadly wound that Cupid's arrow had made in his heart. If the lady actively disliked him, or wished to prolong his torment, she firmly rejected all his pleas. Otherwise she pretended an exaggerated virtue and alarm, gradually appeared to become affected by her lover's emotion and finally, apparently quite distraught, half-fainting and with languorous sighs, succumbed to his attack.
Having been the object of a score of such attempts during the past five years Georgina had come to find them a little boring, and the Russian's only real attraction for her lay in the fact that she believed his love-making would prove quite different from anything that she had so far experienced.
As their long look broke, he picked up the candle again and moved with resolute steps towards her bedroom.
"Monsieur!" she exclaimed. "Wither are you going?"
"Why, to light the candles you will need for your night-toilette, Madame," he replied airily. "Surely you do not think that I am a man who would leave anything half done. I pray you come with me and show me which lights you will require."
She wondered if he meant to pounce upon her immediately he had got her inside, and she was by no means prepared to let him do so as yet. But the casualness of his tone suggested that he intended no more than to complete his service with the candle; so, a little uncertainly she followed him through the door. Then, keeping well away from him, she said: "If you will light the candles on my dressing-table and the night-light beside my bed, those will serve."
He complied without giving her a glance, set down the candle he was carrying next to the night-light on the far side of the big four-poster, and, stepping into the centre of the room looked round it with the eye of a connoisseur.
" 'Tis a lovely apartment," he declared, "and well-suited to be Hymen's playground for the loveliest lady in all England."
"Fie, Monsieur!" she rebuked him. "I am not used to hear such outspoken thoughts from a new acquaintance."
"Indeed!" His eyebrows lifted in faint mockery. "Then Englishmen must be even poorer champions in the lists of love than they are reputed. In my country even acquaintanceship is accounted redundant when two pairs of eyes have met and kindled the Divine spark."
"Then it must be a plaguey dangerous place for the poor females," Georgina smiled. "But come, Monsieur, let us return to my boudoir and you shall tell me something of your country before I send you to your rest."
She had already turned to go through the doorway. Suddenly he took two swift strides forward and seized her from behind. One of his arms shot round her waist and caught her to him, the other encircled her breast with the hand raised to grasp her chin. Catching it firmly between his fingers and thumb, he jerked round her head and, thrusting his own face over her shoulder he kissed her full upon the mouth.
For a moment she let him have his way, then she made a violent effort to free herself; but his grip held her like a vice, and he kept his mouth pressed against hers until they were both breathless.
At last he jerked back his head, smiled down into her eyes, and panted: "A demonstration of how a Russian can love is better than any tales I could tell." Then, shifting his grip, he picked her up, carried her across the room and threw her down upon the bed.