“He must not see her,” was the prompt reply. “Do you think I should have entrusted her to your care if I had not had full confidence in you? You must manage—somehow—anyhow—to keep them apart. A word to the doctor will ensure a certain amount of quiet and retirement for the Princess—she sees only your very intimate friends, and no foreigners, you perceive? Your brother will keep you informed of Captain Wylie’s movements, and when he is in the city you will go to no place where you would be likely to meet him, and you will take care that the direction of your drives does not leak out through the servants. He will scarcely force his way into the Consulate, or if he did, I have no doubt your husband would repel force with force, and public opinion would justify him. If he should obtain an entrance by any stratagem, I can trust you to deal with him.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of that. It is the scandal, the unpleasantness. The man is so atrociously persistent.”
“I understand. I don’t mind telling you that I dislike this delay in Therma as much as you can. But what is to be done? It is all very well to give out that the Princess went on pilgrimage, but every one in the Court circle knows the real state of the case, and she cannot be received as if nothing had happened. Their Imperial Majesties are deeply incensed. I shall represent as strongly as I can the expediency of bringing her back quickly, and you must prevail upon her to write a letter of penitence and submission, which will help matters on. Short of a convent—and I should not care to trust her in one outside Scythia—she is safer with you than she could be anywhere else.”
“I suppose a letter signed by her would not be sufficient?”
M. Kirileff shook his head. “It would appear too casual. No, the writing must be her own throughout. But I hope much from your persuasions. You will keep constantly before her, of course, the peril and disgrace from which she has been rescued, and point out that her only hope for the future lies in a return to Court favour. One warning I must give you. Don’t attempt to represent the young man Smith as a plotter, or as intending anything but the most honourable and bourgeois of marriages. One glance at his face shows you that he is absolutely incapable of the slightest approach to art or finesse of any kind. Remember that he is a mere tool in the hands of the remorseless Panagiotis, who spares no one who comes in the way of his schemes.”
“I will remember,” laughed the lady. “It is a comfort that you think the Princess is willing to be persuaded.”
“I do, but I think she needs to be kept in the same mind. I saw signs of wavering myself, on the morning we left Hadgi-Antoniou, when she expressed a wish to see Smith’s sister in private. I pointed out that the girl—who is endowed with more vivacity than her brother—might very probably, in her rage at the discovery of their plot, attempt some violence, and she agreed at once that I had better be present. That is the sort of assistance I hope for from you—an unobtrusive influence constantly exerted, both to protect her from intrusion and to turn her thoughts in the right direction.”
This conference put Eirene’s two guardians into a state of the highest mutual appreciation, and M. Kirileff went on his way to Scythia with an easy mind, leaving his confederate to make Eirene’s life a burden to her. The next few weeks were the most absolutely miserable the girl had ever experienced, for she knew exactly what Maurice and Zoe must think of her, and she had no means of fulfilling the task she had set herself. The realisation of the part she must play had come to her in a flash as she sat beside the Hegoumenos on the divan, and listened to the measured periods of M. Kirileff. Her first feeling had been something more than the relief he had read in her face—positive triumph. She had been right, after all, when she suspected Maurice of being a prince in disguise. But even as the thought crossed her mind, she read in the Scythian’s expression that she had betrayed herself, and she saw her course clear before her. To remain at Hadgi-Antoniou, throwing in her lot with that of Maurice and Zoe, would do no good. The monastery which had guarded the faith for centuries could guard secrets as well. The prisoners might remain in a living death, unsuspected by the outside world, while it would be announced to Europe that they had met their fate at the hands of the brigands. The Embassies would demand an indemnity and the punishment of the murderers, and Scythia would supply the Roumi Government with the necessary money, while the crime would be added to the record of the next few criminals who had not the wherewithal to grease the palms of justice. Even Wylie would be deceived by a circumstantial story, perhaps by the production of relics of his friends, and would return sorrowfully to India, taking away their last hope. Eirene saw it all, even while she called up the look of resentment and disgust which had assured M. Kirileff of the success of his rearrangement of facts. She must efface from his mind the memory of her momentary slip, she must deceive even Maurice and Zoe, lest he should see in their faces that he was being played with. She must return to civilisation, and in some way communicate with Wylie, and that she might do this, she must throw dust in the eyes of friend and foe alike.
It was a curious feature of her state of mind that the momentous news which she had heard from M. Kirileff scarcely occurred to her, except as a cogent reason why Maurice and Zoe would not be allowed to go free save as discredited and self-confessed impostors. She did not ask herself what its effect might be on her own future, for the exigencies of the present occupied all her thoughts. The magnitude of her task kept her sleepless during her last night at the monastery, and led her to the desperate attempt, which M. Kirileff had frustrated, to secure Zoe as a confederate. It would be so much easier to communicate with Wylie, or with some British representative, if there were two to watch for opportunities instead of one, that she conceived the idea of inducing Zoe to make an apparent submission and accompany her. The envoy’s watchfulness had not only destroyed this hope, but had obliged her to deepen the bitterness with which Zoe must regard her, and she entered on the journey with feelings almost of despair. Without protest she acquiesced in M. Kirileff’s suggestion that it should be announced that her Royal Highness had returned from a pilgrimage to the shrine of Hadgi-Antoniou, and was resting at Therma after the hardships she had undergone, while the friends who had shared with her the experience of being captured by brigands were making a more extended tour among the rock monasteries near the Morean frontier. The announcement would, at any rate, give Wylie some idea of the whereabouts of his friends, and surely, surely, it must lead him to insist on seeing her, and learning from her the true state of the case.
But in this forecast Eirene had reckoned without Chariclea Feodorovna, and the very capable staff of assistants she had gathered round her. The Princess was received with the tenderest affection and respect, and promptly bound hand and foot with bonds too imperceptible to resent, too strong to break. The doctor who was called in to prescribe for her shattered nerves ordered quiet and retirement, with a very little society of a cheerful and familiar kind. What could be more in accordance with the prescription than to limit Eirene’s visitors to selected members of the Scythian colony and a few favoured representatives of those other Powers which were in sympathy with Scythian aims? At the same time, Madame Ladoguin, whose own appearance was a testimony to her skill, took in hand the restoration of her guest’s complexion, which had suffered from a month’s exposure to all kinds of weather, without the protection of hat or veil. It was clear that Eirene could not appear at the Scythian Court—whither she was so soon to return—with a brown face and red hands, and her adviser acted the beneficent tyrant to the life, forbidding her to go out on days when a particular wind—or any wind—was blowing, and applying healing balms which required, in order to produce their full effect, that the patient should spend a day in bed. Resistance was useless, and Eirene acquiesced helplessly for fear of arousing suspicion, but in one thing she would not yield. All Madame Ladoguin’s persuasions and encouragements could not induce her to write the desired letter of penitence to the Scythian Court. To such expedients was she driven that she would spend whole mornings in writing out drafts of the letter and making beginnings, which were all torn up. “I will not leave Therma until I have done something to help Maurice and Zoe,” she said to herself. “After that, it doesn’t signify what happens to me. I suppose I must go back to Pavelsburg, but I won’t write what isn’t true to make them treat me better. Maurice wouldn’t, and I won’t.”