Vseslavitch. There was a wistful, touching expression to the pictured face, but it was a remarkably fine likeness, and Paul glowed with secret joy as he hid it away in his breast-pocket, murmuring inaudibly to be for[177]given for the theft, but—alas for the cause of honesty—gleefully unrepentant. [177] He scarcely had time to move from the table, as his ear caught the rustle of approaching silk, when the fair original of the photograph entered, alone, and greeted him cordially. "I am so sorry!" she said, as she held out her hand toward Paul. "The Countess has been suddenly called to Etampes, where her sister is ill. I am left to do the honours at the tea-table. You won't mind, I hope?" Paul expressed himself as sorry to learn of the illness of the Countess's sister; he did not know the lady. And he spoke the usual regrets over missing the charming society of the Ambassador's wife. But there was a light in his eye which denied any great grief. As a matter of fact, he[178] was overjoyed that he would have the Countess's guest to himself. [178] "Come into the library," said Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, "and we will have the tea things brought in there. It's not too early for you, is it?" Paul laughed at the idea of its ever being too early for an Englishman's tea. Under pressure of work, when Parliament was sitting, he drank innumerable cups. And even when he was spending his time at Verdayne Place he always had tea ready to drink between sets of tennis. The Verdayne tea was famous all over the countryside. It was a Russian variety. Paul always steadfastly refused to divulge to anyone—ever the Vicar's wife—the place where he bought it, and he always had it prepared in a Russian samovar.[179] [179] Once in the library, a great sombre room to which an open coal fire lent a cheerful touch, Paul's companion seated herself at a low tea-table and busied herself with the samovar. "This is Russian tea," she said, smiling. "You may not care for it." "On the contrary," Paul replied, sipping the steaming amber fluid—"I always use this same kind at home. One can't fail to detect the peculiar aromatic flavour which tea retains when it has travelled overland, but which most of the leaves
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