“Here, to-night you mean. Oh, yes, of course, I know that. But you used to have a keen liking for pleasure you know;” and she smiled as though she knew a hundred secrets about me all elaborately dissipated and disgraceful.
“I did not mean to-night,” I corrected. “I meant my visit to Belgrade.”
“Of course, how very stupid of me. Why, it might have sounded as if I meant that in speaking to Gatrina you would be thinking of business.” She laughed with a sort of malicious gaiety. “How very stupid I am. But then, we do call you the Queen’s Advocate, don’t we, Gatrina?”
“Mr. Bergwyn may misunderstand you, Baroness.”
“Oh, no, not the least fear of that. We understand one another perfectly, do we not, Mr. Bergwyn?”
“In what way do you mean, Baroness?” I asked, pointedly.
She took up the challenge readily and laughed, quite joyously. “Why as old friends, old and intimate friends ought to understand one another, of course. What else should I mean?” Deny that old friendship to Gatrina, if you dare, was in the look she gave me.
“The seven years which have passed since we last met, Baroness, have been the stern years of my life,” I answered, for Gatrina’s benefit. “And in them I have forgotten the follies of my childhood in the real life of the world.”
“What a sage you must have become!” she laughed; but the laugh was more palpably forced than before. “Do you know,” she added, “I am just dying to tell you of this adventure of Gatrina’s among the brigands. May I, Gatrina?”
“No. It would not interest Mr. Bergwyn, nor amuse me.”