The few sentences they had exchanged had been in French. “Princess, I want to apologize—yes, a thousand times,” Drexel said hurriedly in English, “for the caddish way I spoke to you four nights ago.”
Her answer was to gaze at him with a puzzled, blank expression.
“I cannot tell you how ashamed I am,” Drexel hurried on. “And I want to assure you”—this barely above a whisper and with all his earnestness—“that I shall never breathe a word of your secret.”
Still the puzzled, blank expression.
“Won’t you—after a time—forgive me? And won’t you trust me?”
Still she wore the same non-understanding look.
Suddenly a dazing idea flashed into him. “Perhaps you do not speak English?” he asked in French.
She smiled faintly, in amused bewilderment. “Yes—a vair leetle,” she said, in anything but Sonya’s pure and fluent English. “I understand Meestair Drexel’s words. But what he means—” She shook her head. “I think you make some meestake.”
She was carried away from him before he could speak again, giving him a half-friendly nod from her imperious head. After all, had he made a mistake? After all, was it possible that she was not Sonya? Could it be that he was the witness and victim of one of those strange caprices of nature which now and again casts two unrelated persons, perhaps from the extremes of the social scale, in the same mould? Could it be that Sonya was merely the double of Princess Valenko? Or was this just an unparalleled exhibition of nerve on the princess’s part—a marvellous bit of acting?
Never was a man more mystified than Drexel. All during the ball the questions ran through his mind, and sometimes the answers were yes, and sometimes no. Once he danced with the princess, but that relieved his bewilderment not at all, for she was perfectly at her ease, smilingly remarked once or twice in her hesitating English upon his mistake, and accorded him that faintly gracious treatment such a high-born beauty might naturally bestow upon a relative of a relative-to-be.