At Her Highness’s side I had strolled through the smaller salon and along the several great corridors to the splendid winter garden, on the opposite side of the palace. It was one of the smaller courtyards which had been covered in with glass and filled with high palms and tropical flowers ablaze with bloom. There, in that northern latitude, Asiatic and African plants flourished and flowered, with little electric lights cunningly concealed amid the leaves.
Several other couples were seated there, away from the whirl and glitter of the Court; but taking no notice, we halted at two wicker chairs set invitingly in a corner. Into one of these she flung herself with a little sigh, and, bowing, I took the other.
I sat and watched her. Her beauty was, indeed, exquisite. She had the long, tender, fluent lines of body and limb, the round waist, the deep chest and small bust, the sturdy throat of those ancient virgins that the greatest sculptors of the world worshipped and wrought into imperishable stone. She was not very tall, though she appeared so. It was something in pose and movement that did it. A beautiful soul looked from Her Highness’s beautiful eyes whenever she smiled upon me.
I found myself examining every line and turn and contour of the prettily-poised head. She was dark, with that lovely complexion like pure alabaster tinted with rose sometimes seen in Russian women. Her eyes, under the sweeping lashes, seemed capable of untold depths of tenderness. Hers was the perfect oval of a young face across whose innocent girlishness experience had written no line, passion cast no shadow.
“One thing I’ve heard to-day has greatly pained me,” I said presently to my dainty little companion. “You’ll forgive me for speaking quite frankly—won’t you?”
“Certainly, Uncle Colin,” she replied, opening her big eyes in surprise. “But I thought you had brought me here to flirt with me—not to talk seriously.”
“I must talk seriously for a moment,” I said apologetically. “It is in Your Highness’s interests. Listen. I heard something to-day at which I know that you yourself will be greatly annoyed. I heard it whispered that Geoffrey Hamborough had killed himself because of you.”
“Geoffrey dead!” she gasped, starting up and staring at me, her face blanched in an instant.
“No. He is not dead,” I replied calmly, “for as soon as I heard the report I sent him a wire to Yorkshire and to the Travellers’, in London. He replied from the club half an hour before I came here.”
“But who could have spread such a report?” the girl asked. “It could only be done to cast opprobrium upon me—to show that because—because we parted—he had taken his life. It’s really too cruel,” she declared, and I saw hot tears welling in her beautiful eyes.