Akin to Eirene’s feelings at this time were those of Wylie. As soon as he heard of her arrival in Therma he tried to see her, but was assured that she was too ill to receive visitors. Losing no time, he took ship with Armitage for Morea, and paid a sufficiently exhaustive visit to the rock monasteries on that side of the frontier to make sure that his friends were not and had not been at any of them. There remained only Hadgi-Antoniou, but on trying to penetrate to it he was promptly turned back by the frontier guards, who asserted that he was attempting to lead a Greek band into Emathian territory. Returning to Therma, with the intention of reaching the monastery from thence, he found himself confronted with obstacles of every description. The Vali had become intolerably solicitous for his safety, and refused to let him go without an escort, while declining either to provide the escort or to allow Wylie to raise one for himself. It was the same with the purveyors of guides, horses, servants, all the necessaries of a traveller, but Wylie was stolidly combating one objection after another, when the distant sight one day of Eirene in the Ladoguins’ carriage gave a new direction to his thoughts. His determination to see her was, however, only the prelude to a fresh series of disappointments. Once, and only once, he obtained an entrance into the Scythian Consulate, where he was received by Madame Ladoguin, who in honeyed accents conveyed to him her Royal Highness’s thanks for his past services, and regret that she was unable to see him. Entreaties, arguments, threats, fell powerless against the armour of her suave impenetrability, and though Wylie retired with the determination to try his luck another day, he was not admitted again.
After this, he tried writing to Eirene. His first letter was answered in her name by Madame Ladoguin, and conveyed the same message that he had already received from her lips, but couched in more formal terms, as though to rebuke his presumptuous importunity. Two or three succeeding letters remained unanswered, and those that followed were returned unopened. Bribery was the next resort, and he found many itching palms among the servants and underlings of the Consulate; but it was not long before he was forced to the conclusion that none of his messages had been allowed to reach their destination.
There was a certain obstinacy in Wylie that refused to be baffled. He watched the doors of the Consulate, he laid ambushes at spots which Madame Ladoguin and her guest were likely to pass in their drives. But his adversaries were equally obstinate, and far more subtle. Nicetas Mitsopoulo dogged his movements with unfailing watchfulness, and reported daily, sometimes hourly, to his sister. False information as to the direction to be taken by the ladies in their drives was liberally supplied, and the carriage never issued from the Consulate when Wylie was on the watch. And yet his persistence was not without its effect at last. An Englishwoman would have said that it got upon Madame Ladoguin’s nerves. If this wretched Englishman continued to picket the approaches to her house in this way, some accident must at length give him the interview which he sought, for she could not always be on the watch everywhere. After mature consideration, and consultation with her brother, she took one of those bold steps which are possible only to great minds. She called on the wife of the British Consul-General and requested a private interview, in the course of which she complained to her with deep regret of the ungentlemanly conduct of one of her husband’s nationals. This person had been one of the party captured by brigands at the same time as Madame Ladoguin’s royal guest, and had so far presumed upon the circumstance as to fall violently in love with the Princess, and to persecute her, even now that she had returned to civilisation, with attentions that were as insulting as they were undesired. He waylaid her daily, bribed servants to convey amorous notes to her, and had filled her with such terror and disgust that she could scarcely bring herself to venture beyond the precincts of the Consulate.
To Lady Francis this revelation supplied at once a key to Wylie’s persistent efforts, and a new and intense interest in life. In all innocence she lent herself to Madame Ladoguin’s manipulation, moved by a sincere pity for him, coupled with a gratifying sense of personal importance in thus becoming involved in the love affairs of a royal personage. She conveyed Madame Ladoguin’s appeal to her husband, and Sir Frank, who liked Wylie and was now doubly sorry for him, requested his presence, and talked to him like a father.
“No discredit to you—most natural, I’m sure—but you see, in the case of a young lady of such high rank, this sort of thing won’t do,” was the burden of his song, and the impossibility of convincing him of the truth drove Wylie nearly frantic. Sir Frank persisted in regarding his solemn denials as attempts not to compromise the lady, and sturdily demanded why he laid wait for her and annoyed her with letters if he was not in love with her.
“But don’t you see, sir,” cried Wylie at last, “that the Princess is the last person who saw the Smiths? I only want to know from her the truth about them.”
“But you have heard that they are exploring among the monasteries. Why should you wish to discredit the Princess’s word and that of M. Kirileff?”
“Why haven’t the Smiths written to me? Why can I find out nothing about them? They must want clothes and things—and money. How can they go exploring without it?”
“I see,” said Sir Frank, beginning for the first time to regard the mystery as something more than a figment of Wylie’s brain. “But what exactly do you want to find out from the Princess?”
“I want to ask her where she left them, and in what circumstances, and how they proposed to manage.”