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Why had Victor hesitated to bid for her confidence with his own tongue, on his own merits? One would think that, if he were her father If! Was he? Sofia sat up sharply, her young body as taut as her temper. Pulses and breathing quickened, intent eyes probed the shadows as if she thought to wrest from them a clue to the mystery of her status in the household of Victor Vassilyevski.
For when Lanyard began to heed the sense of the other's words, their subject was the companion of Lady Diantha Mainwaring. "... Princess Sofia Vassilyevski, you know, the Russian beauty." Lanyard lifted his eyebrows the fraction of an inch, meaning to say he didn't know but at the same time didn't object to enlightenment. "But you must have heard of her!
Remember ..." He patted significantly the pocket which held the revolver, and turned back to Harris. "This gentleman," he said, consulting the signature to the cheque, "is Prince Victor Vassilyevski. Please remember him. You may have to bear witness against him in court." "What insolence is this?" Victor demanded, hotly. "Calm yourself, monsieur le prince." Lanyard repeated the warning gesture.
Nevertheless, undue inquisitiveness on the part of a servant in the pay of Victor Vassilyevski could have but one reward. "Nogam!" "Sir?" "Fetch me an A-B-C." "Very good, sir." With Nogam out of the way, Victor enclosed the telegram in a new envelope and addressed it simply to "Mr. Sturm by hand."
Against a feeling that she was adopting an attitude both undutiful and unbecoming, Sofia persisted. "Why?" Prince Victor Vassilyevski gave a gesture of pain and reluctance. "Must I tell you? Why not? You must know some day, as well now as later, perhaps.
"If anything should happen to Karslake now, it would break Sonia's heart, but..." "And after the part he played in that Vassilyevski show his lease of life wouldn't be apt to be prolonged by staying on in England." "I agree; but still !" sighed Duchemin, throwing himself heavily into a chair.
Toward mid-evening the man Victor Vassilyevski and his creature Sturm sat where the lamp of hand-wrought brass made the top of the teakwood table an oasis of light amid a waste of shadows, their heads together over a vast glut of books and papers maps printed and sketched, curious diagrams, works of reference, documents all dark with columns of figures and cabalistic writings intelligible only to initiated eyes.
On the other hand, intuition kept admonishing her that in real life things simply didn't happen like this, so smoothly, so fortunately; somehow, somewhere, in this curious affair, something must be wrong. "Please: what is my father's name?" "Prince Victor Vassilyevski." "You're sure it isn't Michael Lanyard?" Now Mr. Karslake was genuinely startled and showed it.
Alone with his secretary, Prince Victor Vassilyevski dropped indifferently the guise of manner with which he had clothed himself for the benefit of the woman whom he claimed as his own child.
When it was all over, when the gravelled drive no longer crunched to wheels that bore away the man Nogam to answer for his misdeeds, when the household had quieted down and the most indefatigable sensation-monger had wearied of singing the praises of the Princess Sofia and, tossing off a final whiskey-and-soda, had paddled sleepily back to bed, lights burned on brightly in two parts only of Frampton Court, in the bedchambers tenanted respectively by Prince Victor Vassilyevski and his reputed daughter.
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