"I do not even know whether he has any visitors. None from our part of the country I believe. But I saw no signs of secrecy about the place. It is naturally very lonely and secluded, and out of the line of the more important roads. And he has as good as told me that he was busy about something that he did not wish to talk about. It is suspected in some quarters that his business is the forgery of Russian rouble-notes."
"No, you don't say that! What a people we are! Ah, yes, ah, yes! I have been on the Continent for some weeks, or certainly I must have heard that grand joke. And they will make a raid upon him soon with a search-warrant I dare say. Oh, I would give something to see that! Tell them to keep the dogs in. I know what they are. And the policemen would shoot them as soon as look, for doing the very duty they have to do themselves, only doing it with a little more sagacity. Don't forget that, Mr. Cranleigh. I wouldn't have those dogs killed for a thousand pounds. There is not a dog to compare with them in England. I knew their grandfathers in the Caucasus."
Hereupon I told him, just to help my case, how lucky I had been by a very simple stratagem in saving the life of that glorious Kuban from a low beast of a bull-dog, and he laughed, and said "Capital! I should never have thought of that. By the by, I know something of your brother, Mr. Cranleigh. He has very nearly made a diamond, and he came to me about it. Upon my word, I thought at first that he had succeeded, until I threw my test-light on it. It was the nearest approach that has been accomplished yet. I dare say he told you all about it."
"Not a syllable. He never does, unless it is to try the effect upon me. He has the lowest possible opinion of my intellect. He has monopolised the brains of the family. But he is glad enough to come to me for more substantial things."
"Ah, yes! I see. But he will astonish the world some day. What amazed me about him was not his inventive power—though that must be very great, of course—so much as the quantity of pluck he showed, at any rate I should call it so. You would have thought it the turning-point in a young man's life, to know whether he had solved the great problem, or failed; but his hand never shook, it was as steady as mine now, and his colour never changed, he was as cool as any cucumber—the last one I bought was as hot as ginger. And when I said, 'No, sir. Not quite yet,' he made me the most beautiful bow I ever saw, and walked off, leaving the work of months with me."
"That is Harold all over. But he will never do any good. He is always on the brink of success, but never in it. And if he ever does succeed, all he'll say will be just this—'Oh, any fool can do that,' and never think of it again. However, I must not go on about him. Time is getting on, and I ought to be at home again. What answer shall I take to Miss—Miss Prince Imar?"
"Do you know what Dariel is?" Nicolo was smiling in a genial manner at my levity. And then he said, to crush it in a truly British manner, "Dariel is the heiress to the throne of Georgia. She has the pink eagle on her left shoulder."
"But there is no throne of Georgia now," I answered, quite uncrushed, for she might have been heiress to the throne of all the stars, without mounting any higher than she already was with me; "the Russians have got Georgia, and who shall ever turn them out?"
This will show how I had got up my subject. A month ago Georgia, for all I knew or cared, might have been the property of our former George the Fourth, or still the prize of victory for Saint-George and the Dragon.
"You take things as quietly as your brother Harold does. Ah, yes! it must be in the family, no doubt. But I give you my word that it is true, Mr. Cranleigh. Not that her father is a Georgian though, he belongs to a higher race, the Lesghians, and the highest tribe of the Lesghians. All the others, such as Shamyl, are Mohammedans. Dariel's mother was the Princess Oria, the last representative of Tamara, the celebrated Queen of Georgia; and she was carried off from Tiflis—it is a most romantic story; I can't tell you a quarter of it. But there was some frightful tragedy—bless you, they are always having tragedies there—and the long and the short of it is, that Imar has incurred the blood-feud. You may be sure that he never ran away from it. He has the greatest contempt and loathing for all such horrible heathenism. After the capture of Shamyl all hope of resistance was over, for the Mohammedan tribes fell away, at once. Shamyl's chief hold over those fierce races had been his position as Imaum, which confers divine command over those who belong to Islam. Ah, he was a gallant Chieftain, but cruel sometimes, ah, yes, ah, yes!"