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Updated: August 20, 2024
"But if I give up Miss Donovan I think I shall not buy the pearls from Madame Ypsilante. There are, alas, few queens." Gorman was not, after all, more than five minutes late for dinner. The King was waiting for him, but without any sign of impatience. Madame Ypsilante entered the room a minute or two later. She was wearing a purple velvet dress which struck Gorman as a very regal garment.
Fleetwood had been very unhappy at having been compelled to go so much out of his way to get rid of the Frenchmen; but he was well rewarded for the delay, by falling in, when just off the mouth of the Gulf of Egina, with the very brig he had chased before touching at Cephalonia, the Ypsilante.
There was, as it turned out, neither a flight nor a wedding next day. Madame Ypsilante developed a feverish chill. She was plainly quite unfit for a boat voyage and in no condition to be married. The Queen and Kalliope took up the work of nursing her with enthusiasm. The Queen would not listen to a word Gorman said to her.
Madame Ypsilante noticed the expression of the King's face when he looked at her. She also saw the nod that was meant for Gorman. She became uneasy. Her eyes had a hard glitter in them. Gorman at once refilled her glass. That soothed her a little. She did not break anything. But she spoke: "Konrad, at once tell me all that the Emperor said."
Konrad Karl did not rebuke her disloyalty. He merely shrugged his shoulders, feeling that it was no use damning the Emperor. That potentate would not moult a feather though Madame Ypsilante cursed him all day long. Madame herself felt the uselessness of losing her temper with some one she could not hurt. She asked the King to give her a glass of brandy. That stimulated her imagination.
Madame Ypsilante was present when Gorman first suggested the sale of Megalia. She cut into the conversation with a very pertinent remark. "The price," she said, "would be enormous." Madame is a lady of expensive tastes and appreciates the advantage of possessing money. There was at that time in Goldsturmer's Bond Street establishment a rope of pearls which she very much wished to possess.
He made up his mind to accept the invitation even if he had to miss the most important division which Parliament enjoyed during its whole session. The prospect of seeing Konrad Karl and Madame Ypsilante practising middle-class virtue in Beaufort's Hotel was by itself sufficiently attractive. The promise of important affairs for discussion was another lure.
The friends, in talking over the adventures of the past, would very likely have forgotten what Fleetwood considered the much more important present, when they were interrupted by the entrance of a midshipman, who brought the agreeable intelligence that a sail, supposed to be the Ypsilante, was in sight to windward. "Huzza, then!" exclaimed Rawson.
The Ypsilante, it must be understood, was on the starboard tack, with her head about north-west, while the mistico was running about south, and about to haul up as soon as she could round the island on the larboard tack, so that the attempt to escape was not altogether so hopeless as might at first have appeared, had not the Venus gone round to intercept her.
"I don't envy the Emperor the job of tackling her," said Gorman. "He won't find it a bit pleasant. I daresay he doesn't know Madame Ypsilante. He wouldn't be so cocksure of himself if he did. She's the kind of woman who throws things about if she's the least irritated. If the Emperor suggests her selling those jewels there'll be a riot. But it's no business of mine.
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