‘Othmar has admirable tact——’
‘How your mind runs upon Othmar! Kings generally acquire a great deal of tact from the obligation to say something agreeable to so many strangers all their lives. He is a kind of king in his way. He has learnt the kings’ art of saying a few phrases charmingly with all his thoughts elsewhere. It is creditable to him, for he has no need to be popular, he is so rich.’
‘Ask him to dinner to-morrow or Sunday.’
‘If you wish. But he will not come; he dislikes dinners as much as I do. It is the most barbarous method of seeing one’s friends.’
‘There is no other so genial.’
She rose with a little shrug of her shoulders. She seldom honoured Napraxine by conversing so long with him.
‘Order the horses, Ralph,’ she said to Lord Geraldine; ‘I want a long gallop.’
‘She has had some decisive scene with Othmar,’ thought Lady Brancepeth, ‘and she is out of humour; she always rides like a Don Kossack when she is irritated.’
‘There is no real riding here,’ said the Princess, as she went to put on her habit. ‘One almost loves Russia when one thinks of the way one can ride there; of those green eternal steppes, those illimitable plains, with no limit but the dim grey horizon, your black Ukrane horse, bounding like a deer, flying like a zephyr; it is worth while to remain in Russia to gallop so, on a midsummer night, with not a wall or a fence all the way between you and the Caspian Sea. I think if I were always in Russia I should become such a poet as Maïkoff: those immense distances are inspiration.’