The Princess, seeing that Giles found this conversation somewhat trying, refrained from further remark. She shrugged her ample shoulders, and sipped her coffee, which she complained was bad. "You do not know how to make coffee here," she said, unfurling a fan, "and it is cold, this England of yours."
"Princess, to-night is warm!" expostulated Ware.
"Nevertheless I have had a fire made up," she answered, pointing with her fan to the end of the room; "the landlord was so surprised."
"He no doubt considered it to be an eccentricity of Her Highness," said Olga, with a laugh; "a cigarette, mother?"
The Princess took one languidly, and moved her chair closer to the fire. The night—to Giles—was quite hot, and he could scarcely bear the stifling heat of the room. Windows and doors were closed, and the fire flamed up fiercely. Also some pastiles had been burnt by Olga, and added a heavy, sensuous scent to the atmosphere. Ware could not help comparing the room to the Venusberg, and the women to the sirens of that unholy haunt. Which of the two was Venus he did not take upon himself to decide.
"I am used to the tropics," explained the Princess, puffing blue clouds of smoke. "I come from Jamaica; but I have been many years in Vienna, and in that cold Hungary," she shivered.
"Ah, now I see, Princess, why you speak English so well," said Giles, and he might also have added that he now guessed why she was so Eastern in appearance and so barbaric in her taste for crude, vivid colors. She had negro blood in her veins he decided, and Olga also. This would account for the fierce temperament of the latter.
"I left Jamaica when I was twenty-two," explained the Princess, while her daughter frowned. For some reason Olga did not seem to approve of these confidences. "Prince Karacsay was travelling there. He came to my father's plantation, and there he married me. I am sorry I did not marry someone in Jamaica," she finished lazily.
"My dear mother," broke in her daughter petulantly, "you have always been happy in Vienna and at the Castle."
"At the castle, yes. It was so quiet there. But Vienna, ach! It is too gay, too troublesome."