CHAPTER XIV
It was exceedingly difficult for a person of Nada’s frank and open temperament to resort to the arts of the dissembler, to feign a cordiality she did not feel. Still, she managed to pull herself together and, to a creditable extent, conceal her dislike of her unwelcome visitor. With a grave courtesy she invited the Spanish woman to seat herself.
“Your note has distressed me, Madame, for more than one reason. In the first place I am very sorry to hear that Signor Corsini is menaced by a great danger. I met him in London; ours was the first private house he played at after his great success at the Covent Garden concert. I have a great esteem for him as an artist, and I am shocked to think that, after so short a stay in my own country, he should be the victim of some sinister designs. Secondly, I am the more disturbed because your letter tells me very plainly in what quarter these designs are being entertained.”
Madame Quéro spoke very quietly. The Princess disliked her, of that she was assured, and she returned the dislike with compound interest. Still Nada was doing her best to be civil and polite. It should not be her fault if the interview was not conducted with perfect discretion on both sides.
“If the danger had not been very great and also very imminent, Princess, I should not have taken the liberty of intruding myself upon you. We move in different worlds, it is true, but I am some sort of a personage in my own sphere and not fond of exposing myself to rebuffs at the hand of a waiting-maid.”
Nada blushed at the shrewd, quick thrust, although the words were spoken without the least heat.
“I am very sorry you should have felt offended,” she faltered. “But of course, I could not deliver the message myself.”
Madame Quéro dismissed the subject with a graceful wave of the hand. If Nada had the composure of the aristocrat, she had the self-possession of the woman of the world. She could skate over thin ice as delicately as anybody.