Christina looked up at him sharply, surprise the predominating expression on her face. But before she could speak, Baba's clear tones again made themselves heard.
"Just tell Baba 'zackly—'zackly what the princess in the white frock was like; Baba wants to know."
Again Rupert felt impelled to speak, almost against his own inclination, and his words came with a readiness, which, if he had considered the matter, would greatly have surprised him.
"She was tall," he answered; "very tall and very stately, as stately as one of the palm-trees under which she stood; and her face was white like her gown, only, it was not white as sick people are white, but like the whiteness of a rose, very clear and pure. And her hair was black—black as a raven's wing"—his voice grew dreamy, he seemed to have forgotten his listeners, and merely to be thinking aloud, whilst he watched the leaping flames of the fire—"and her eyes were deep and dark, fathomless wells of colour, and very sad." Christina drew in her breath quickly, and leant forward, an eager look on her face. "I—never saw any eyes like those," the man's voice continued; "they held so much—they had seen so much, they were so beautiful—and so sad. The princess"—he started, and tried to resume a lighter tone—"was the most beautiful lady in the world, little Baba."
"She is just like——" Christina began impetuously, then stopped short, remembering the secrecy enjoined upon her, by the woman whom she knew only as "Margaret,"—the woman of the lonely valley house.
"Just like—who?" Rupert turned to her with the sharp question, a sudden gleam in his eyes. "Do you know anybody answering to the description I have just given? Have you ever seen someone like—like my princess?" The eagerness of his tones, the gleam in his eyes, showed Christina the necessity for caution, and she answered quietly—
"I think the lady you describe, is something like a lady I once saw; at least, she was beautiful, with dark eyes and hair," the girl ended confusedly.
"It could not be the same person," Rupert said with decision. "The princess I am describing—was unique. You would not speak of her in those terms of lukewarm praise. Her beauty was something beyond and above anything ordinary or everyday."
"So," Christina was on the point of saying almost indignantly, "so was the beauty of my lovely lady," but she checked her words just in time; prudence demanded that she should say nothing, rather than that by saying a word too much, she should betray another woman's trust.
"I should like—to have seen her under the palm-tree," she said, wondering in her girlish heart, whether it was the beautiful princess in the white gown, who had brought the lines of pain about this man's face, and into his grey eyes; wishing, too, with girlish innocent fervour, that it might be given to her to take away some of his pain.