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Updated: May 31, 2025
"My dear Princess Sofia," Karslake protested: "if I had known one word of Chinese I could never have landed my job with your father." "Why not?" "He expressly stipulated that I should be ignorant of that language." "What a silly condition to make!" "Still, I daresay Prince Victor had his reasons." "I can't imagine what ..."
"Because you like me a little, Princess Sofia?" "Why yes of course I do " "Because you know I love you, dear." And then she found herself clinging to Karslake; and his lips were warm upon her hands ...
Karslake entered, the polished pattern of a young gentleman of means, slenderly well set-up in an exquisitely tailored brown lounge suit, wearing a boater and carrying a slender malacca stick in one chamois-gloved hand, the butler stood up at his table, quietly acknowledged his greeting "Ah, Nogam! you here already?" and waited for the younger man to be seated before resuming his own chair: a stoop-shouldered symbol of self-respecting respectability, not too intelligent, subdued by definite and unresentful acceptance of "his place."
Alone with her immense and immitigable misery, she lay in darkness tempered only by the dim skyshine that filtered through the window draperies; hating life, that had no mercy; hating the duplicity that had led Karslake into making untrue love to her, but inexplicably not hating Karslake himself, or the enshrined image that wore his name; hating herself for her facile readiness to give love where all but the guise of love was lacking, and for knowing this deep hurt where she should have felt only scorn and anger; but hating, most of all, or rather for the first time discovering how well she hated, him to whom unerring intuition told her she owed this brimming measure of heartbreak and humiliation, the man who called himself her father.
No need to go into tedious details; I found Karslake had matters well in hand: the gas works surrounded by a cordon of troops, the house under close watch, and best of all a sworn confession from an Irish Member of Parliament whom Victor had managed to buy with a promise to free Ireland once Soviet England was an accomplished fact.
For all that, her times of solitude knew dreams quick and warm with the thought of Karslake, his words and ways, the gracious little attentions he had accustomed her to expect of him and which his manner subtly invested with a personal flavour inexpressibly delightful, indispensably sweet.
The wind raved about them, buffeted them, tore their breath away, rain pelted them like birdshot; but they clung to each other and were unaware of reason for complaint. Presently, however, Karslake remembered, and anxiously endeavoured to disengage from these tenacious arms. "Let me go, dearest," he muttered. "I must go back I left your father to take care of Victor, and "
But she simmered with indignation, and contemplated futile plans especially in the long, empty hours of the afternoon, between luncheon and the hour of the apertifs countless vain plans for abolishing these intolerable conditions. She thought a great deal of the strange man who had talked with young Mr. Karslake, and wondered about him.
I'll send him in if you like." Prince Victor uttered with dry accent: "Why?" "Thought you might care to have a talk with him, sir." "I have." "Oh!" Mr. Karslake exclaimed "I didn't know." "Quite so," commented Prince Victor. "I shan't need you again to-night, Karslake." "Good-night, sir."
Karslake explained his uninvited if timely intervention by stating that he was conducting her to the parent of whose existence she had so recently been informed, he succeeded not to put too fine a point upon it only in making it all seem a bit thick. So for the time being Sofia contented herself with silent study of his face as fitfully revealed by the passing lights of Shaftesbury Avenue.
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