“My most beautiful and best beloved, you are cruelly wrong, and I will prove it to you. If I place in your keeping the most sacred treasure of our house, handed down for hundreds of years before the birth of John Theophanis himself, will you believe me then? If anything should happen to me, you have only to produce that jewel to show that I acknowledged you as my honoured wife, and as rightful Empress of the East. Ah, my beloved, you are yielding! I will not ask you to see me again until I can put the treasure into your hands, and you will own how much you have misjudged your Apolis.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE GIRDLE OF ISIDORA.
It was about ten o’clock in the morning, and Despina was clattering things furiously in the kitchen as she collected baskets and other aids to shopping, for she was late in starting. The Lady sat in the morning-room opening on the verandah, writing a letter which seemed, from her frequent pauses, to be difficult to frame, and Danaë was playing bo-peep with Janni in and out of the window. Above the child’s shouts of laughter came the imperative sound of the door-bell, and Danaë caught him up in her arms, and followed at a discreet distance in Despina’s wake as she went to open the door.
“Aha, old mother, you won’t be able to start just yet!” she cried mockingly, as the Prince rode in, followed by Petros, for Despina would never delegate even to Mariora the duty of keeping the door in her absence.
“May he that is without and afar [i.e., the devil] fly away with that girl! If I catch her, I’ll teach her saucy tongue a lesson!” muttered the old woman furiously.
“I should recommend a red-hot skewer,” was the soothing suggestion of Petros, as he flashed a glance towards Danaë to show that he had understood her intimation. “A monk at the Holy Mountain told me that the worst of scolds could be cured by marking a cross on her tongue with it, if the proper prayers were said at the same time.”
Despina requited his sympathy with another curse, and Danaë laughed as she followed the Prince, who had taken Janni in his arms. He gave the child back to her as they reached the house, and she sat down again on the verandah while he greeted his wife. Reading in her eyes the question she was too proud to ask, he unbuttoned his tunic, and took out something wrapped in linen which had been concealed there. Danaë, her curiosity aroused, watched him with eager eyes while he unrolled it, but she sang mechanically to Janni the while, lest her interest should be observed. One by one he released from the protecting folds a series of circular plaques of gold, gleaming with jewels and translucent enamel, while the Lady looked on, puzzled and a little disappointed, and Danaë’s breath came quick and fast.
“Byzantine, I suppose?” said the Lady, fingering one of the plaques; “and not intentionally comic?”
“Wait!” said Prince Romanos sharply. He was fitting the plaques together by means of the little gold hooks and chains attached to each, until they formed a small portrait-gallery of severe-featured saints, with jewelled halos and dresses. He held it up. “If the people in the streets as I passed had known that I was bringing this to you, Olimpia, they would have torn me limb from limb. It is the girdle of the Empress Isidora.”
Danaë gasped, in spite of herself, at the sound of the name, which was the only word she understood, but she had already guessed what the jewel was. Handed down in the Christodoridi family was a metrical version of the exploits of the famous, and infamous, Empress, in which the girdle figured largely, and Danaë could have named each ill-favoured saint from memory. And this treasure, the badge of Orthodox sovereignty, her infatuated brother was now handing over to the schismatic woman who had bewitched him! Even the Lady, who knew nothing of its legendary fame, was impressed as she took it into her hands.