Before Mrs. Crespin could answer, the Major said eagerly, “May we hope, Raja, that you were laying a dawk for our return?”
Rukh laughed pleasantly. “Pray, pray, Major, let us postpone that question for the moment. First let us fortify ourselves; after dinner we will talk seriously. If you are in too great a hurry to desert me, must I not conclude, Madam, that you are dissatisfied with your reception?”
“How could we possibly be so ungrateful, Your Highness,” she said. “Your hospitality overwhelms us.”
Rukh swept his eyes over her slowly, as she stood before him—she had risen at his entrance—and then he said deferentially, “I trust my Mistress of the Robes furnished you with all you required?”
The Englishmen frowned a little at his question—they did not dare go beyond that—but Lucilla smiled gravely, and told him brightly, “With all and more than all. She offered me quite a bewildering array of gorgeous apparel.”
“Oh, I am glad.” There was just a caressing note in the Raja’s voice, more than a hint of velvet, as there so often is in the high-bred Asiatic voice when it speaks a foreign tongue. And again the long, close-lidded Oriental eyes swept her slowly with a something of appraisement. Traherne saw it, and chafed, but what could he do?—“I had hoped that perhaps your choice might have fallen on something more—” his eyes indicated “décolleté” even more than the graceful gesture of his slender olive hand. It was delicately done, but his unspoken meaning was unmistakable. Traherne threw an ugly quick look to Major Crespin, but Crespin had strolled to the loggia opening, and seemed to have seen or heard nothing. Had he gone to be nearer the big wine-cooler? Traherne wondered viciously. But again what could Crespin do? Nothing that would not aggravate their peril. “But no,” the soft silken voice said on, “I was wrong—Madam’s taste is irreproachable.”
A white-clad servant, with the Raja’s livery of green and silver and gold twisted in his puggree, came in bringing cocktails. Lucilla Crespin was glad of the interruption, and made the man’s approach serve for that. She shook her head at the salver he proffered her, and moved away to a table, and picked up a book.
The men drank. Traherne’s throat felt as dry as Crespin’s for once, but when Rukh put down his glass he followed Mrs. Crespin, and glanced at the yellow paper-bound volume she held.
“You see, Madam,” he said to her, “we fall behind the age here. We are still in the Anatole France period. If he bores you, here”—he offered her another book—“is a Maurice Barrés that you may find more amusing.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Crespin told him, as she took it—she had to take it—“I too am in the Anatole France period, I assure you.” She glanced a little apprehensively at the titled back of the newer book, and a shade of relief touched her face. “‘Sur la Pierre Blanche’—isn’t that the one you were recommending to me, Dr. Traherne?” she asked over her shoulder.