“Oh, I hadn’t heard that,” said Zoe.
“They arrived this morning, with a note from Mme. Ladoguin to say that the duplicity of Armitage’s behaviour since his audience of her had so shocked the Princess that she considered herself released from any obligation to him. They have found out what happened at Hadgi-Antoniou, you see. I suppose Papa Demetri’s messenger got through just too late for them to stop us.”
“I wonder if it would be any good my going?” mused Zoe. “I scarcely like leaving Maurice for a whole day, but——”
“You musn’t think of it. You don’t imagine that if they let you in it would be for any good? The next thing we should find out would be that you were smuggled away to Scythia, and we should have to begin the hunt all over again.”
Zoe laughed. “Perhaps if I wrote a note to Eirene, they would let her answer it,” she said. “I suppose Maurice would be satisfied if he knew she was well, and not utterly miserable. You don’t think she has started already, do you?”
“There was nothing of that kind in the note, and they could just as well have said that the pictures had arrived too late, if they wanted to snub Armitage. Well, shall I ride in with the note, and do my best to get it into the Princess’s hands? More I can’t promise, but it’s just possible that they won’t be looking out for me now, and I may manage to see her.”
“I don’t like giving you so much trouble——”
“It’s no trouble. In fact, I must have gone in to-day or to-morrow to report to Sir Frank Francis, who has done what he could for us all along, in a blundering, slow-coach, civilian sort of way. He’s a good old chap. The Professor has been talking of going in too, to see the Vali. He believes he’s on the track of a Thraco-Dardanian conspiracy to destroy all the Greek and Roumis in Emathia at one fell swoop, so he’s naturally excited, and thinks he’ll make the Vali so too.” Wylie spoke lightly, for his pride had imposed upon him the expediency of treating Zoe as she treated him. If she did not care to remember the days in which they had faced death and hardship together, he was quite willing to behave as a mere ordinary acquaintance. He would serve her in any possible way—that much his love for her demanded of him—but he would not court rebuff by exhibiting his feelings. The natural result of this course of conduct was that Zoe, missing something in his manner which she liked, while objecting to what it implied, began to make delicate experiments for the purpose of ascertaining how far she could go. She declined now to be drawn aside from the topic she had started.
“It doesn’t seem fair that you should always be running errands for us. We seem to have annexed you altogether. How is it you haven’t had to go back to India yet?”
“Got an extension of leave,” said Wylie, unmoved. “Always glad to make myself useful when I can, you know. Well, if you will write that note, I’ll find out whether the Professor is going into town, and go without him if he isn’t. I should think we shall spend the night at his house, and come out to-morrow, which will give me a little more time to besiege the Princess.”