‘I have a great deal more energy than he,’ said Nadine Napraxine, with a smile, as she leaned back in the wicker lounging-chair, looking as indolent as a Turkish woman, and as delicate and useless as a painted butterfly.
The schooner in twenty minutes’ time landed them at a creek, with a little marble quay, shadowed by great pines and eucalyptus trees; there was a pavilion on the small pier, a pretty kiosque all white and blue and gold, with twisted pillars and Moorish arabesques.
‘Remember, nothing here is of my taste or choice,’ said Othmar; ‘I have not been at the place for ten years. Would you like to rest? They can bring your tea to you; or would you come up to the house at once?’
‘Va pour le château,’ said Nadine Napraxine; ‘I never care for the preface of a story.’
‘I fear you will find it a dull story,’ said he, as they left the quay and passed up a steep path, always under the shadow of the trees.
‘What a misfortune for him that he inherited so much! It prevents him enjoying any thing,’ she said to Melville; who replied, a little drily:
‘I do not think it is what he inherited which prevents his enjoyment, Princess; it is more probably what he encountered and sighed for vainly. Life holds many of these ironies.’
‘If I were he,’ she continued, ignoring the reply, ‘I should care for nothing but that power which he, in common with other great capitalists, possesses. To be able to make a war possible or impossible by the mere inclining of your wand of gold—that must be the most interesting of all possible kinds of influence.’
‘Yes, the financier is the modern Merlin, but then there is Vivien——’
‘In Mr. Tennyson’s poem, not out of it,’ said Princess Nadine, sceptically; but she knew very well that Vivien was then walking under the shade of her own great red parasol, with its group of humming-birds embroidered on its left side.