“I’m always ready for a visit to your only rival,” said Sir Carey.
“La Mosquee Verte! I’ll think about it. We might go for three or four days.”
Her warm voice sounded rather reluctant; yet her husband knew that she wished to go.
“It would be an excellent way of showing your mantle to the gossips,” he remarked. “But you always think of excellent ways.”
Two days later the Embassy yacht, the “Leyla,” having on board Sir Carey and Lady Ingleton, Mrs. Clarke, Cyril Vane, Dion, and Turkish Jane, the doyenne of the Pekinese, sailed for Mudania on the sea of Marmora, which is the Port of Brusa.
CHAPTER V
On the day after the return of the “Leyla” from Mudania, Mrs. Clarke asked Dion if he would dine with her at the Villa Hafiz. She asked him by word of mouth. They had met on the quay. It was morning, and Dion was about to embark in the Albanian’s boat for a row on the Bosporus when he saw Mrs. Clarke’s thin figure approaching him under a white umbrella lined with delicate green. She was wearing smoked spectacles, which made her white face look strange and almost forbidding in the strong sunlight.
“I can’t come,” he said.
And there was a sound almost of desperation in his voice.