“Perhaps he is like me, and can’t write on paper, but only on walls or the ground,” suggested Danaë, and was much pleased when Linton merely muttered angrily and would not deign a reply.
Two days later she was playing on the verandah with the children, when a young man came up the steps with a light springy step. Seeing her, he took off his hat hastily, and she saw to her surprise that he was not as young as she had thought. There was even gray in his hair. She rose politely and faced him.
“Good-day, lady,” he stammered, and Danaë was wickedly delighted to detect that he blushed.
“Good-day, lord,” she responded, hoping fervently that Linton was not within earshot, to come forward and point out that she had no right to be called ‘lady.’
“Colonel Wylie—the Lord Glafko—told me to come up here—that I should find Princess Zoe——” he said confusedly.
“The Lady Zoe was here just now, but she has been called away,” said Danaë, with great composure. “I think you will find her downstairs, lord.”
“Perhaps she will come back,” he said—evidently gaining courage, she thought. “I must speak to the little chap now I am here. I say, I didn’t know there were two! How awfully queer not to have let me know!”
“The little lord here is ward to the Lord Glafko,” explained Danaë. “This is the Lord Harold.”
The newcomer took Harold into his arms in a dazed kind of way, said he supposed he had grown, and really his eyes were exactly like Wylie’s. Then, apparently growing desperate under Danaë’s solemn gaze, he murmured something about some sweets which were in his luggage, and went down the steps again.
“Who is the island-princess you have got up there?” he demanded eagerly when he met Zoe downstairs.