“Do you think it’s very complimentary to me to suggest that he will fall in love with a nurse-maid—with my nurse-maid?”
“Nonsense! here he is with an empty place in his heart, and you throw him into the society of ‘the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.’ Ah, the thought has occurred to you, I see! What do you propose to do—get rid of the girl?”
“How can we cast her adrift? No, what I should like to do, if he really cared for her, would be to educate her—train her for him.”
“My dear Zoe, isn’t that idea just a little high-flown? Do you recollect that Armitage is a peer of the realm, with a certain amount of position to keep up—even in these degenerate days—when you calmly propose to promote his marriage with a young lady of unknown parentage and confused views of right and wrong? Do you even think it would be fair to him?”
“Most unfair, unless he could awaken the soul in her. If he could——”
“If he could, then all the worldly objections might go hang? Well, I am not the person to object, since Princess Zoe stooped to marry me.”
Zoe put her hand over his mouth. “You were never to say that!” she cried.
“But it is a fact. Well, then, we are to further this preposterous affair, are we? I suppose we shall know if Armitage is really smitten, because he will want to paint her portrait.”
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE TRACK.
Danaë was much exercised in her mind by the fact that Prince and Princess Theophanis dined with the Wylies that evening, and that after the meal, when they all repaired to the verandah, Maurice and Wylie made a careful inspection of the surroundings, evidently to see that there were no eavesdroppers at hand. They were plotting something at last, she was sure, and she crouched in the corner of the nursery window, which was as near to them as she could get, and listened eagerly to the scraps of conversation that reached her ears until disgust drove her away. She could hardly have expected that they would speak in Greek for her special benefit, but she felt distinctly injured when she found they were using, not English, which she had begun to pick up, but French. This was for the sake of Armitage’s secretary, M. Lacroix, a soldierly-looking elderly man in a threadbare dress suit, who had sat almost silent throughout the meal. Now, on the verandah, Armitage brought him forward, and insisted on his taking a chair in the midst.