“Miserable dog!” cried Prince Christodoridi in a fury. “Is it for this I have maintained you close to my son’s person, charging you to keep me acquainted with all that touches one so dear to me, from whose side I am kept by my responsibilities here?”
“Some folks say it is his Highness’s own wish that keeps you here, O my Prince—that since you refused to aid him with a single drachma in gaining his position, he does not see why you should expect to derive any benefit from it.”
“Thickhead! why should I spend money in championing the cause of God and the saints? Is their power not sufficient? Has the cause not triumphed? Yet my son, who derives from me the rights which are now fully recognised, expresses no desire for my presence at his side.”
“Perhaps his Highness thinks less of his rights than you do, my Prince.” Petros was keenly enjoying the inconsistency of his lord’s last two utterances. “I have heard him say that he owed his success to the intrigues of the Powers, and that right was altogether on the side of the Englishman, him of Klaustra.”
“And after that you still think my son is able to take care of himself?” asked the Prince pathetically. “I tell you, Petraki, he will be his own ruin. Come, earn your wages, and let us save the misguided one from the destruction that threatens him.”
“I take his Highness’s wages too, and I don’t know what he will think about my earning them,” grumbled Petros. “If the Lady had not distrusted me and tried to turn the Lord Romanos against me——”
Danaë raised her head a little, and bent forward, so as to make sure of not missing a word. There was nothing revolting to her in the idea that her father should employ her brother’s confidential servant as a spy upon him, for it was of a piece with the methods which she saw in operation around her every day, and it was only natural that he should wish to participate in the good fortune of the son he had banished and wished to disinherit. Romanos Christodoridi, elected Prince of Emathia by the free vote of the inhabitants, under the auspices of the Powers of Europe, ought to have been a gold mine to his relatives, and Danaë felt no reluctance to subject the brother whose indifference had so deeply disappointed her to a little interference with his plans. Besides, “the Lady” sounded interesting.
“I did not ask for your reasons, friend Petros,” said Prince Christodoridi, disposing, with a snap of his fingers, of the belated scruples of conscience which were troubling his instrument. “I ask for obedience and truth. What of this woman, then? Who is she?”
“They call her ‘the Lady’ in Therma, O my Prince,” Petros spoke doggedly. “She lives in a retired house outside the city, and never goes out, and receives no one but his Highness.”
“She is perhaps old enough to be his mother?” asked the Prince sarcastically.