I noticed that she hesitated. She did not seem at all desirous to see me at their hotel. I, of course, knew the reason. The old lady was not Madame Demidoff in Palermo.
“We will call and see you at the Igiea,” she said. “We have never been there yet.”
“I shall be delighted,” I answered her. “Only send me a note, in order that I may be in.”
Beyond the town we ran along beside the calm blue sea, with the high purple hills rising from across the bay.
Bright and merry, she seemed quite her old self again—that sweet and charming self that I had first met in that rough, uncouth Bulgarian town. After an hour, we got out and seated ourselves on the rocks to rest.
She was certainly not averse to a mild flirtation. Indeed—had she not already been engaged to Hausner, broken it off, and was now half engaged to the Marquis Torrini? She was nothing if not fickle.
“Yes,” she sighed at last, “I suppose we shall have to go back to humdrum London, before long. It is so much more pleasant here than in Toddington Terrace,” she added in her pretty broken English.
“Ah! Mademoiselle,” I laughed. “One day you will marry and live in Paris, or Vienna, or Budapest.”
“Marry!” she echoed. “Ugh! No!” and she gave her little shoulders a shrug. “I much prefer, Prince, to remain my own mistress. I have been too much indulged—what you in English call spoil-et.”
“All girls say that!” I laughed. “Just as the very man who unceasingly declares his intention to remain a bachelor is the first to become enmeshed in the feminine web.”