As she passed on to a sitting-room where a great fire of pine logs was burning on an open hearth Marrion removed her veil and threw off her heavy fur cloak.
So, as she came out of the dark passage into the sunlight that streamed through the sitting-room windows, she stood revealed. The effect was not nearly as startling as she had anticipated, but it was far more overwhelming.
The old face lit up with sudden pleasure, the thin old hands were stretched out--
"Sacha!" she said. "Darling, after all these years! And you never came before. Paul did--and he was your twin--though he has only just gone, Sacha! I have wanted you so often."
"Dear lady," she said, taking the outstretched hands and holding their chilliness of age in her warm clasp, "I am not Sacha. I am Paul's daughter!"
Princess Pauloffski drew back and passed her hand over her eyes.
"Excuse me. I forget. I live so much alone and my dead come to see me so often when there is snow. But if you are not Sacha----" She took a step forward and scanned her visitor narrowly. "You say you are Paul's daughter--an English daughter--did he then marry over there? For it is true you are his daughter--even his twin was not more like. Come, sit down, child, and tell me how you come by Paul Pauloffski's face?"
It was almost incredible! Marrion as she obeyed her grandmother's gesture felt inexpressible relief. Here there was no haggling, no questioning. She was taken literally on her face value. It was a haven of rest.
Together they sat on the quaint old settle as if they had known each other for years, while Marrion told her tale. She produced the golden snuff-box, with its glittering monogram, and laid it in the old Princess's lap; but she merely glanced at it. Her chilly old hands were busy detaining the hand that had laid it there--the hand that was still alive.
"Yes, Paul is dead," she murmured, half to herself. "Sacha died first when she was so beautiful, like you. And Paul's wife died, and now his two sons are gone; there is none left but me, and I am very old. And now you come--tell me more, child!"
And Marrion went on with the story. It was like a dream to be sitting there in the streaming sunlight heart to heart as it were with someone of whose very existence she had been unaware but one short half-hour before.