"Rather distant, I should fancy," said Cassy, who was conscious of the delay, though not of the click. The delay she had noticed without, however, divining the cause. But how could she possibly imagine that Mrs. Beamish had been evolved for the sole purpose of providing her with basilica opportunities? Yet the fault, if fault there were, resided in her education. She had never read Eliphas Levi. She did not know that genii can be evoked.
"Well, she is more my sister's cousin than mine," Paliser anxious to get out of it, threw in. "I mean my sister has a more cousinly nature."
"I did not know you had a sister," said Cassy, who not only did not know but did not care. "Though, come to think of it, a sister with a cousinly nature must be so gratifying. Another distant relative, isn't she?"
"Very. She is in Petrograd."
That too was evocative. Cassy began talking about the biggest cropper that history has beheld—a tsar tossed from the saddle to Siberia!
Paliser, glad to be rid of Mrs. Beamish, took it up. The sordid story of the Russian chief of staff, bought by Hindenburg and shot by the Grand-Duke Nicholas, whom the tsar then exiled, was told once more.
"What else could you expect of that Hun?" Paliser concluded.
"A Hun!" Cassy exclaimed. "Why he is a Romanov."
"No more than you are," Paliser replied. "The last of the Romanovs married Catherine the Greater. There the breed ended. Paul, who followed and who married a German drab, was Catherine's son but not her husband's. The rest of the litter, down to the father of the recent incumbent, all married German drabs. The father of the ex-tsar married a Dane. The fellow is therefore one-eighth Dane and seven-eighths Hun. Totally apart from which, a grocer who knew his business would not have had him for clerk. His family knew that and, before he had time to be tsar, tried to poison him. To the misfortune, not of Russia merely, but of Christendom, they failed. If they had succeeded the eastern front would be secure. As for his wife, I saw her once. It was in the Winter Palace which, before it was sacked, was a palace. Since the palace of the Caliphs of Cordova crumbled, there has never been a palace like it. It outshone them all. Well, that woman tarnished it."
Meanwhile dishes were brought and removed by servants, wooden-faced, yet with ears alert. The subject of elopements had seemed promising, but it led to nothing. At their own table, talk was gayer.