“I cannot inquire into this case; it must go before the Prince,” he said. He was too much shaken to give the necessary orders, but an eager messenger ran to bear the news to Maurice, and the scene of the inquiry was quickly changed to the broad verandah before the Prince’s house. Eirene sat beside her husband, with a curious watchful look on her face, and Zoe, whom they had wished not to disturb, seemed to divine in her restless sleep that there was news, and woke and came as well. With an instinctive sense of drama, messengers and servants alike had combined to prevent the news from reaching Danaë, and when she was sent for she came unsuspiciously, expecting, indeed, further cross-examination, but nothing worse. It was not the lowering countenance of Logofet that first warned her of the crisis, but the look on Armitage’s face as he leaned against the side of the doorway. One glance he gave her—a quick inquiring glance, as though to assure himself that she was unjustly accused—then he deliberately turned his eyes away.
“I have sent for you, Kalliopé, because what Logofet has to tell concerns you,” said Prince Theophanis. “Sit down beside your mistress, and when he has spoken we will see what you have to say.”
Danaë sat down on the doorstep, conscious as she did so that Zoe, as if mechanically, moved her chair a little farther away, and Maurice signed to Logofet to speak. The prisoner had managed to learn the state of affairs by this time from the conversation going on around him, and was correspondingly elated. He spoke with a certain soldierly bluffness, which left entirely out of sight the fact that he himself was anything more than a witness.
“I am a plain man, lord, and cannot tell a long story. Two days ago I met Kalliopé’s uncle in the town——”
“Wait; how did you know he was her uncle?” asked Maurice.
“Why, lord, he said so; besides, I saw him outside Therma the day that this ill-omened girl first thrust herself into your house. He said he wanted to speak to his niece, and asked me to let her pass out and come in again. He had some good raki with him, and I consented. That evening she went in and out quite properly, though rather in a hurry, so I thought little of it when he asked me to do the same for him again the next night. She was an obstinate piece of goods, he said, and wouldn’t do what she was told, but I was to tell her to bring the brat this time, or it would be the worse for her——”
“You said ‘your brat.’ You know you did!” burst from Danaë.
“To bring the brat, or it would be the worse for her,” corrected Logofet, with the air of an honest man unjustly aspersed; “and thinking that she was about to relieve you, lord, and the gracious lady your sister, from the maintenance of herself and that foundling she brought with her, I thought it an excellent deed. So he gave me another glass of spirits—which I swear to you, lord, must have been drugged, for after giving the message to the girl I fell down insensible, and knew no more.”
“Now, Kalliopé, what have you to say?” asked Maurice. “You told the Lord Glafko last night that you had not seen your uncle at all, except at a distance, that the message you received merely told you he was here, and that you went down into the great courtyard to look for him, but could not find him.”
“And it is all true, lord,” cried Danaë desperately. “This man is lying, having hated me since the day your kindness brought me to this house. I have spoken no word to the man Petros, who calls himself my uncle, and I went nowhere last night to look for him, save into the great courtyard.”