At her gesture he took a seat, as far from her as the limits of the marble bench would allow, and protested, with all the ease and vivacity of a criminal summoned to execution, that he could ask for nothing better than to be allowed to make an humble effort to entertain her Royal Highness. She watched him through half-closed eyelids, enjoying his discomfiture.
“And when do you propose to return to take up the duties of your post, monsieur?” she asked him softly. “I have not observed any undue anxiety on your part to discover the quickest way of getting back to Therma.”
“My health, madame—the shocks I have undergone——”
“Ah, yes—true. The first shock occurred before you embarked, did it not? Otherwise you could hardly have mistaken a Port Said boat for a Czarigrad one.” The unhappy man writhed. “And it must have been most humiliating when the captain defied you to your face,—of course you had threatened him with condign punishment if he did not put back and land you on the quay again?—and even refused your lavish offers of money.” She looked across at him, then laughed gently. “No, my poor Skopiadi, nature never intended you for a hero, but she made you a serviceable diplomatist. Why did you run counter to all her warnings by allowing them to make you Vali of Therma?”
“Alas, madame! I had no choice.”
“I see. On the whole it was rather less dangerous to accept than refuse, was it? Your ruin was only problematical if you went, but certain if you stayed at Czarigrad. I imagine, however, that you gave no hostages to fortune? Madame Skopiadi and your daughters are nowhere in the Roumi dominions?”
“My wife was unable to accompany me to Therma, madame. She was ordered to take a protracted cure at Charlottenbad, and she is now in Paris, superintending the education of her daughters.”
“Very wise. And I shall not be doing you an injustice if I suppose that your fortune is safely invested—also outside the Roumi dominions? On the whole, then, we may take it that you have no thought of returning to Czarigrad at present—in fact, that you will studiously remain at a distance from it?”
“Madame, I neither assent to your conclusions nor deny them.”
“It is unnecessary. But observe, monsieur, they are more than conclusions, they are facts. Still, they will remain hidden in my mind, unless I have occasion to make them public. You have a considerable reputation in Europe, I believe? The Powers all favoured your appointment?”