As he did not reply she stood up, came round to him, and perched herself upon his knee. "My poor Rojé Christorovitch," she murmured. "What a gruelling experience you have been through; but it is past, and your victory should serve to incite you to triumphs of another kind. I am the spoil of victory and yours to do what you will with. Yet I have none too much time to reward you as you deserve, for it's near half after nine already, so in less than an hour I must be gone."
Suddenly he realised that at some point of time within the past few hours his passion for her had died. Apart from a slight soreness in his throat and a dull ache in his left shoulder he was feeling perfectly fit again; yet he had not the least desire to make love to her, and doubted now if he would ever feel the urge again. On the other hand he knew that he could not yet afford to dispense with her. So, although he shook his head, he smiled at her and said diplomatically:
"Nay, my beautiful Natalia Andreovna. For once I fear that I must disappoint you. I still feel sick and heady from the recent brawl, and am not equal to challenging you in love's lists tb-night. I pray you excuse me and allow me to rest again, while you solace my sadly frail and aching body by the very fact of lying quiescent by my side."
Immediately she was all concern, and on his pretending a renewed attack of vertigo, she helped him to the settee; then lay beside him with one arm about his neck. They remained so, hardly speaking, until, at ten o'clock, Ostermann knocked upon the door and announced that the lady's carriage awaited her below. She poured a final glass of wine, and while they drank it, he assured her that he would send her a message asking for a rendezvous immediately on his return from Lake Ladoga.
This night of strife and blood seemed to have had exactly contrary effects on them. Never before had her farewells been so lingering and so loving; and she swore that if any ill befell him she would die of grief on account of it. Her declarations were so fervid that he found it difficult to doubt their sincerity, and he had to admit to himself that, in her own extraordinary way, she must certainly have a very deep and genuine feeling for him.
At a quarter past ten, she put on her hooded cloak and mask, and despite her protests, he saw her down to her carriage. She had allowed an ample safety margin of time for her return and she would have lingered, had he not insisted that she must run no risk of some unforeseen misadventure upon the road causing a delay which might result in her finding herself locked out.
As her carriage clattered away Roger drew a deep breath of the fresh night-air into his lungs, and his apparent tiredness fell from him. Re-entering the house he called to Ostermann to fetch his horse round immediately, then ran upstairs to find Zaria Feodorovna.
She was sitting in her attic fully dressed and waiting for him. At the sound of his footsteps she jumped to her feet and threw open her door. He had only to beckon and she hurried after him down to his apartment.
In the two months that she had been with him she had picked up quite a lot of French, and although she could speak it only in a garbled fashion she now had no difficulty in understanding everything he said to her.
When they reached the sitting-room he told her briefly that an enemy of his had attempted to kill him, but had been overcome, and was now lying tied up in the bedroom. To punish the fellow he meant to keep him there all night; but as he had to set out at once on a journey himself he wished her to act as wardress.
Taking Zaria into the bedroom he gave her a hunting-knife, pointed to the prostrate Count and said: "I want you to sit here with him till morning. If he starts to struggle go over and look at the knots which secure him. Should they appear to be slackening prick him with the knife until he stops wriggling. But also examine the gag over his mouth. If you find that he shows signs of suffocation, and is struggling on that account, loosen it a little, so that he gets more air. At six o'clock you are to cut the cord that ties his wrists, then leave him to untie his ankles himself. He will be too stiff to grab you and do you any harm. As soon as you have freed his hands you are to leave the house and take a holiday with your parents for the next three days. I expect to be back on Friday, so you can return here that night. If, in the meantime, anyone seeks you out and questions you about this man, you will simply say that I told you that he was a villain who had attempted to assassinate me, and that you did no more than carry out my orders."
Zaria felt the point of the knife with her finger and grinned at him. "You may leave all to me, lord, and know that I shall do exactly as you bid me. May St. Nicholas protect you on your journey."
He was troubled with no scruples at having involved her in an illegal act, since, as his serf, she was bound by law to obey him in all things, and could not be called to account for carrying out any orders he might give her. Having kissed her on the forehead and chucked her under the chin, he hurried back to the sitting-room to collect his cloak, sword and pistols.
As he was doing so his eye fell upon three rings, lying on a low table near the settee. They were Natalia's; she had taken them off before bathing his face and had evidently forgotten to put them on again. Snatching them up he unlocked the brass-bound coffer in which lie kept his money, threw them inside, re-locked it and ran downstairs.
Ostermann was outside walking the mare up and down. With a word of thanks to him Roger mounted her and trotted off down the street. He had Yagerhorn's laisser passerin his pocket; and was well satisfied with the eventual outcome of the night's events. His arrangements had worked so smoothly that barely eight minutes had elapsed between Natalia Andreovna's leaving and his being on his way to Finland.
Once clear of the city the road led north-west across the Karelian isthmus. Unlike the splendid highways to the south of the Gulf which led to Peterhof and Tzarskoe-selo, it had no fine columns of marble, jasper and granite to mark the versts, or the eleven hundred globular lamps which were always kept burning at night to light the way for courtiers and couriers hastening to or from the Imperial Palaces; but fortunately the moon was nearly at the full and shining in an almost cloudless sky.
Without forcing the pace, so as to save his mare, and dismounting every hour to give her a good breather, Roger steadily ate up the miles. He had the best part of a hundred and fifty miles to go, and shortly before three in the morning he entered the little town of Kyrola, having covered a good third of the distance.
Knowing that the inn would be certain to prove squalid and verminous, he watered his mare at the village-trough, tethered her to a nearby tree, and gave her a feed from her nose-bag; then he wrapped himself in his heavy cloak and lay down in a dry, grassy ditch to get some sleep. It was Wednesday, the 29th of August, and the chill of autumn was already in the air, but he was warmly clad and felt no discomfort from it.