“I don’t know why you shouldn’t. It would be only natural, surely? You seemed pretty hard hit when you went.”
“You seem to forget that when I went to the Soudan I put her out of my head.”
“But could you manage it?”
“Generally, I’m thankful to say.”
“Ah, but not always? Don’t think I’m trying to pry into your affairs,” burst out Armitage in his boyish way, “but it means a lot to me. I’ll stand aside without a word if you’re going to ask her again, but if not—— Well, I might have some little chance.”
“Oh, don’t mind me. I told her I should never ask her again, and I haven’t the slightest wish to do it. If my swamps and slave-raiders have done nothing else for me, they have cured me of all that sort of thing. I’m not bragging—or whatever you might call it—but telling you a simple fact. Women don’t interest me now, and other things do. I used to imagine I could combine the two, but now I know better. If my blessing is all you want to make you happy, go in and win. But if this business comes to anything, she will be for neither of us. You see that?”
And while Armitage acquiesced, with a rueful face, Zoe was saying to herself, as she adjusted her hat in the cabin mirror, “Of course I never expected him to forgive me the moment he saw me again. It would have been nice if he had, but it wouldn’t have been a bit like him.”
During the remainder of the voyage down the coast the adventurers made no further attempt to discuss their prospects. They excited considerable interest on board the Ungaro-Croata steamer, where the mutual relations of the handsome lady who had the history and archæology of the region at her fingers’ ends, the sick officer, and the “Milordo” with the artistic neckties, who from force of habit was constantly pulling out a sketch-book and jotting down the bold outlines of a headland or the handsome face of a fisher-lad, were freely canvassed, but even the urbane and polyglot captain confessed himself at a loss. The sick officer knew something of a good many languages, and asked very telling questions, and both the lady and the “Milordo” had visited these parts before; but they all talked so freely that there was no chance of finding out anything more about them, averred the worthy sailor. He and a few of his passengers enjoyed a mild sensation when the steamer reached the little red-roofed town, whose white houses seemed to rise sheer from the blue water, where the three English were to land. Here an elderly man, whose spectacled eyes gave the impression of an incongruous contrast with his aquiline profile, came on board to meet them, and bowed over Zoe’s hand with a respect that was almost reverential; but the spectators could hear nothing of the colloquy that ensued while the luggage was being got on shore.
“I come as the messenger of your august brother, madame,” he said. “He thought it well you should know that he enters on this campaign not as Mr Teffany, but as Prince Maurice Theophanis.”
“Which means that I am to call myself Princess Zoe, I suppose? This is the Princess’s doing, of course?”