“Our chief sent her invitations to the Embassy balls on several occasions a year ago, but she declined each,” I heard the attaché saying. “She’s a royalty, so I suppose she thinks herself just a cut above us. But, after all, I don’t blame her,” he added, reflectively. “Diplomacy is but the art of lying artistically. She has no need to struggle for a foothold in society.”
“Correct,” observed Allender. “The women who flutter around at our Embassy are the gayest crowd I’ve ever struck. I reckon they’re not of her set. But she’s a very fine woman, even though she may be a Highness. She’s simply beautiful. I’ve seen some fine women in my day, but for thrilling a man’s soul and driving him to distraction, I never saw anyone to compare with her.”
“That’s so,” Cargill acquiesced. “Yet her refusal to come to us has often been remarked by our chief, especially as we’ve entertained a crowd of other princesses and high nobilities at one time or another.”
“She has a reason, I suppose,” observed Goron, slowly twisting his eternal caporal.
“Goron appears to know all her secrets,” said Cargill, winking at me knowingly. “He trots her about Paris at night, and she confides in him all her little anxieties and fears. A most charming arrangement.”
The astute officer, who, by his energetic action, had succeeded in effectually stamping out the Anarchist activity, smiled and raised both his hands in protest, crying,—
“No, no, messieurs! It is in you younger men that the pretty women confide. As for me, I am old, fat and ugly.”
“But you act as the protector of the philanthropic Elizaveta Nicolayevna,” observed Cargill, “therefore, when you next see her, tell her how her portrait in Le Monde has been admired by an impressionable young Englishman, named Deedes, and present to her the compliments and profound admiration of all three of us.”
“Don’t do anything of the kind, Goron,” I cried, rather angrily. “Remember I know the lady, and such words would be an insult.”
“Very well, if you’re really going to call on her, you might convey our message,” exclaimed the attaché, nonchalantly. “You’re not jealous, are you?”