With this little passage of arms, in which Miltiades may be said to have come off second best, the Captain and his sister retreated, proudly stopping to receive the apologies of Madame and Dr. Jarovisky, and left the field to the enemy.
“A very curious scene indeed,” remarked the Right Honourable Samuel Warren, M. P., to Mrs. Mowbray Thomas. “It is most refreshing to obtain these picturesque glimpses of foreign manners.”
“They’ll have to drop asking that woman into society,” said the English Ambassador. “She is downright dangerous. I never heard of such a thing in my life—striking a pretty, inoffensive girl in a drawing-room.”
“We are perhaps a little insular and restricted, and our drawing-room life is insufficiently supplied with excitement and surprise,” rejoined the Cabinet Minister.
It was some time before the guests fell into the ordinary social groove. Whether they danced, or chatted, or walked about, they managed to keep a careful and apprehensive eye upon the artist who had so unexpectedly upset the universal equilibrium. But Photini tranquilly ate the ice Agiropoulos brought her, indifferent to the general gaze fixed thus upon her, called for a glass of cognac, and then, with a look of bland defiance at Rudolph, who stood leaning sulkily against the wall, announced her intention of playing once only, and then taking her departure. Rudolph neither heeded the purport of her movement nor the direct challenge of her amber glance. His thoughts were away with Andromache, telling him that she was prettier and sweeter than any one in these crowded rooms, wondering if she were crying, and resolving to meet her brother somewhere the next day and to obtain permission to call on her. Photini he simply loathed.
But ah! good heavens, what a horrible test of his hatred! There was that tantalising witch actually playing at him the fatal irresistible “Mélodiés Hongroises.” He closed his eyes, not to be tempted to look at her with softened emotion; steeled his heart against her that it should not melt upon such sound; but he did not shut his ears. And when their eyes met perforce, there was no longer anger in his, and there was triumph in hers.
CHAPTER X. A RANDOM SHOT.
Dr. Selaka was a proud and hopeful man on the morning he saw Gustav Reineke depart for Syra, in charge of the amiable captain of the Sphacteria. On his return from the Piræus, where he had bidden him farewell, he bethought himself of the duty of inquiring into the identity of this mysterious personage. He consulted Dr. Galenides, who in turn consulted the German Consul and was referred then to the Baron von Hohenfels. Herr Gustav Reineke was vaguely known upon learned repute, but of his antecedents, parentage, means, and social and domestic condition, no information could be accurately obtained. Assertion was winged upon surmise, a very untenable resource with foreigners. There might be a Frau Reineke and a domestic circle in the background, and there might not. Of shadier relations no note was taken. In olden days, we know, science went hand in hand with sharp poverty—clearly an undesirable sequel to Inarime’s protected girlhood. With such a possibility ahead, Dr. Selaka recognised the rashness of arresting the eye of hope upon this particular marriage, despite the depressing reflection that his maniacal brother would infinitely prefer to support an archæological son-in-law, than see Inarime gracefully enthroned above Athenian matrons, a jewel in solid, unlearned gold.