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"Yes," he replied, almost tenderly; "but my beautiful Grashna is a wonderful craft at least, I think you will say so when you see what she can do. Now, if you will take advice, you and Miss Marmion will go into shelter, for it will begin to blow soon."
In fact, if you had not found yourselves able to come, I should have run the Grashna back to Cowes, gone up to London, plunged into a maelström of dissipation, and probably ended by losing a great deal of money at Ascot and Goodwood. Ah, Miss Marmion, good morning! How well the air of Copenhagen seems to agree with you!
Neither she nor her father were strangers to yachts, but when they mounted the bridge of the Grashna and looked over her from stem to stern, they had to admit that they had never seen anything quite so daintily splendid. They had chosen their rooms, and Jenny was below unpacking. Although, of course, he had a captain on board, the Prince often sailed the yacht himself when he had guests on board.
When they reached the promenade along the Sound shore Oscarovitch pointed to a beautifully-shaped, three-masted, two-funnelled white yacht lying about five hundred yards out, and said: "That is the Grashna, Miss Marmion. I hope you like the look of her." "She is beautiful!" exclaimed Nitocris, recognising at once the vessel which had met the Russian destroyer on the early morning of the 7th.
I am not very fond of those descriptions in stories which read like extracts from an upholsterer's price-list, nor yet those accounts of meals that, after all, are only menus writ large, so it may suffice to say that the saloon of the Grashna was an arrangement of sandal-wood panels, framed in thin silver filigree, and hung with exquisite little masterpieces in water-colour, and black and white, and crayon, mostly sea-scapes, with here and there a beautiful head with living eyes which followed you everywhere; that the rich yellow of the panels was enhanced by portières and curtains of deep golden-bronze silk, and that the domed ceiling was of pale, sky-blue enamel spangled with the constellations of the northern heavens, which at night lit up the whole saloon with a soft electric radiance.
Of course, I cannot presume to ask you to change your plans all at once, but if you will sleep on my proposition and come and lunch with me to-morrow on board the Grashna and take a run up the Sound, say, to Elsinore, you may be able to come to a decision."
"Despotism, Niti and an angel from heaven for the despot," he replied, with another look into the Prince's eyes which brought him to the conclusion that the sooner his presence on board the Grashna was dispensed with the better for his plans. There was a sense of quiet mastery in Franklin Marmion's manner which made him uneasy.
He had wired for his yacht, the Grashna, to meet him at Dover, run across to Ostend, found that they had left there for Cologne with through tickets for Copenhagen, again guessed rightly that they would spend a few days there and in Hamburg, and then steam away for the Sound.
The Grashna was heading nearly due south at an easy speed towards the Baltic Islands. Something told both Nitocris and her father that the decisive hour would come soon, and they were both prepared for its advent. The Prince and the Professor sat up in the smoking-room for a considerable time after Nitocris had retired.
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