“So she is, I suppose, and that’s why the wedding was kept private. But Latin or not, a marriage is a marriage, and when it’s acknowledged, the Princess will remember those who have been faithful to her. Not that I would tell you all this if there was any chance of your going and talking about it outside, girl,” she added hastily, as Despina returned, “but there isn’t. Once you’re here, you stay here.”
“But will the marriage always be kept private?”
“Of course not,” said Despina, with considerable irritation. “How could it, with the young Prince growing up, and all? And the sooner his Highness acknowledges it the better, say I.”
“And so anyone would say,” agreed the other old woman. “But how it’s to be done now, Despina, is more than you or I can tell, wise as you may think yourself. It seems to me that the Lady has missed her chance.”
“Missed her chance?” cried Despina angrily. “She’s missed three chances, and you know it as well as I do, Mariora. She missed one when she let him marry her privately, instead of standing out for her rights, and she missed the second that night she came to me all trembling to say he swore he could not live without her, and would she not come to Therma secretly until he could safely acknowledge the marriage? That was her worst mistake, but she might have redeemed it when the child was born, and she refused, even when I begged of her to do it. ‘I will not stoop to extort recognition from my husband, if my entreaties cannot avail, my Despina,’ she said, and stuck to it. And entreaties! you can see she tries them every time he comes, and what’s the good? She’s tiring him out, she is.”
Danaë’s eyes were aflame with indignation, not against her brother, but the Lady. The enchantress was not satisfied with ensnaring her victim, then; she wished to keep him for ever, to ruin his future without hope of remedy. It never occurred to Danaë for a moment to regard the marriage at Bashi Konak as binding—she was far too strongly Orthodox to admit that a Greek could marry a Latin by Latin rites—but she feared that Prince Romanos might be induced to go through a second ceremony, prior to which the bride would renounce her schismatic creed. Then woe to all hopes of an alliance with Scythian royalty, to the great aggrandisement of the Christodoridi. Danaë’s courage rose again, and she felt that the trials of her journey were well worth enduring if they enabled her to defeat the Lady’s plans.
“If you have finished, my girl, you can go to the Lady now,” said Mariora. “The Prince will be with her, but you need not be afraid of him. He comes from the islands himself, though I’m glad to say he doesn’t talk the island talk.”
This slur on the purity of her Greek sent Danaë haughtily out of the kitchen, and guided by the loud directions of the two old women, she passed through a stone-paved hall, and across a wide shady verandah. Under a tree on the sloping lawn in front a lady and gentleman were at tea. Danaë advanced boldly, with no fear of being recognised, since her half-brother and she had never met. The lady heard the sound of her slippers on the gravel and looked round, then turned back to the gentleman and spoke rapidly in French.
“Such a tiresome thing!” she said. “It seems that foolish Despina asked Petros to find me a nurse-girl in the islands, and he has brought back some niece of his own. And I dislike Petros so much that I don’t want any of his family here.”
“Put the blame on me,” said Prince Romanos softly. “I was glad to think that my son would know the lullabies his father used to hear as a child.”