“Yes, the naughty girl has effectually spoilt her appearance for some time,” said Zoe. Armitage was smoothing the thick blue-black strands, and she took them from him with gentle firmness. “I shall keep this to make Miss Kalliopé a wig when she needs it,” she said. “If she should take it into her head to cut off the other plait the next time she has a fit of temper, there will be nothing to fasten her cap to.”
“Yes, indeed, ma’am,” agreed Linton. “Anything more like a pig with one ear than that poor ill-tempered girl as she rushed past me just now I never did see. And to show such a wicked spirit, when his lordship was taking her picture so beautiful! I do hope, my lord, if I may make so bold, you’ll paint her with the short hair showing, as a lesson to her to keep her temper in hand for the future.”
“But that would spoil my picture,” objected Armitage, who was an old friend of Linton’s.
“And if it did, my lord, what’s that to curing a fine handsome girl like that—and good with children too, as I must confess, though I wouldn’t say as much to her—of her wicked ways?”
CHAPTER XI.
THE RETURN OF PETROS.
Whatever course Armitage might take with regard to his picture, Danaë was conscious that her outbreak of passion had set a barrier between her and the rest of the household. Even the children shrank from her in her black moods, and now Linton gathered them ostentatiously under her wing, requesting Danaë not to come near them until there was no danger of her doing them a mischief. This was the nearest approach to scolding that she received, for Zoe, without even alluding to the cause of the disfigurement, helped her to rearrange her hair in two smaller plaits so that it was as far as possible disguised. Armitage’s bandaged wrist was a perpetual reproach to her, but she met with no reproof in words, though when she plucked up courage to apply to Wylie, who had found and confiscated her dagger, for its restoration, he refused without vouchsafing a reason. But though no word was said, and no punishment inflicted, she was surprised, and even irritated, to find that she felt her guilt much more keenly than on a memorable occasion when she had pushed Angeliké, then a child of four, off the fortress wall. Angeliké happily fell into a rubbish heap, and beyond being half-choked with dust, suffered no harm; but the incident roused Princess Christodoridi from her usual placidity, and she insisted that her husband should inflict a suitable punishment on his elder daughter, towards whom she suspected him of undue partiality. Struggling and screaming, Danaë was held fast by the women-servants while her hair was cut off by her father’s dagger, and thereafter, a miserable little shorn object, she had been held up to every visitor as a model of juvenile depravity until her mother grew tired of the subject—the injured Angeliké meanwhile basking on the softest cushions, and enjoying the first taste of every dainty dish. The girl could recall even now the fierce thrill of resentment of the injustice that seized her when, just as her hair had almost grown again, her mother had rehearsed the whole story to a stray cousin from another island, though perhaps it was her father’s injudicious sympathy that brought her at last to feel as if she was the injured party and Angeliké the aggressor. But now, assure herself as she would that Zoe and Armitage had mocked her cruelly and intentionally humiliated her, she could not bring herself to believe it, and the unaccustomed sense of guilt made her increasingly miserable. To use Linton’s phrase, she “moped,” and the household seemed to have lost sensibly in light and colour while she hung about in secluded corners. It was a relief when, after three days of morose inactivity, she asked sullenly for stuff and needles and thread, though she still sat solitary, making herself a new apron in place of the one she had torn up.
The end of the verandah, whither she betook herself, was quite remote from the usual living rooms, and she worked as if for a wager, undisturbed by either Zoe or Linton, who thought that a period of reflection would do her no harm. Hearing steps in the court below her, she set them down to one of the servants passing on an errand, until a low hiss and the word “Kalliopé!” reached her ears. Looking over the railing, she saw the guard Logofet, who had never forgiven her for the reprimand he had received on the occasion of their first meeting, standing below.
“Your uncle’s here, Kalliopé,” he said with a grin.
“I have no uncle,” she cried angrily.
“Oh, that’s all very fine. He told me to tell you that your uncle Petros was here, waiting to speak to you, and that it would be the worse for you if you didn’t go.”