Danaë was not to be allowed any mitigation of her hard fate; even the alleviations devised for her by her friends were forbidden. When her brother saw her in the European dress, he sent her promptly back to change it, and she travelled in his train not as his sister, but as Janni’s nurse. For her own purposes she had chosen to leave Strio as a nurse-girl, and as a nurse-girl she should return thither. Her brother refused to own her. Petros, who was discovered at Therma, hanging about the Palace in a state of considerable embarrassment not unmixed with apprehension, since he did not know what his master had heard or what he would do, found himself treated as the person responsible for her misdoings. The very morning after her arrival, as soon as a respectable elderly woman had been installed to look after Janni, Danaë was summoned to the Prince’s private room, and confronted with her alleged uncle, who was evidently extremely uncomfortable, and rather inclined to bluster. Some coins lay on the table.
“I won’t take them!” Petros was asseverating. “You will accuse me of stealing next. I know you, my Prince.”
“Take your wages, girl,” said Prince Romanos coldly to his sister. “You will be expected to bring back something to add to your proïka [dowry] when you return from your situation. You had better take your niece back to Strio at once,” he added to Petros. “Your passages are taken, and her luggage will be sent on board.”
“But am I to go at once, lord?” Danaë ventured to ask.
“You will go straight from this room to the quay. And tell the girl’s father from me,” again he addressed Petros, “that he will do well to find her a husband at once, before she brings further disgrace on his house. And you may warn the husband to look well after her.”
Flame flashed from Danaë’s eyes at the words and the obvious glee with which Petros received them—for was not his master ranging him with himself against the Despot and the Lady Danaë?—but it was quenched by a sudden rush of tears. “O my Prince, you will let me bid farewell to the little lord?” she faltered.
“No,” said Prince Romanos curtly. “I wish you had never come near him. I wish I had never set eyes on you!” he cried passionately. “I wish Strio and all upon it had been sunk in the depths of the sea a year ago, before you were inspired by the devil—” Danaë shivered at this plain speaking instead of the usual periphrasis—“to come and turn my life into a wilderness! To see you touch the child whose mother you murdered is an abomination; I will not hear of it. Go back to your accursed island, and may the fates repay to you and your accomplices the measure you meted out to the innocent! As for you, dog—” he turned suddenly on Petros, whose discomfiture on finding himself the object of his master’s attention was very marked—“you cozened me out of a pardon, I believe?”
“I had your promise, my Prince,” responded the delinquent, with an involuntary grin, partly due to nervousness.
“And you tried to place me under an obligation to you by stealing the Lord Glafko’s son?”
“Why, lord, you were always lamenting that you had no way of bending the Lord Theophanis to your will, and when the chance offered I thought I would give you one.”