"You hardly look any more--twenty, perhaps, and--never kissed!"

A memory rose up of a scorched neck, and suddenly Tamara's long eyelashes rested on her cheek.

Then into his splendid eyes came a fierce, savage, pa.s.sionate gleam, which she did not see, but dimly felt, and he said in a low voice a little thick:

"And--as--yet--never really kissed."

"Milly," said Tamara, as calmly as she could, "what time do we get into Brindisi to-morrow morning? And think of it, on Thursday night we shall be at home."

Home seemed so very safe!

The Prince did not come in to luncheon, something was the matter with his Arab horse, and he had gone to see to it just before--a concern on his face as of the news of illness to his nearest kin.

Tamara was gay and charming, and laughed with Stephen Strong and the captain in quite an unusual way for her. They both thought her an adorable woman. Poor Tamara! and so she really was.

About tea-time Prince Milaslavski turned up again.

"He is all right now," he said, sure that his listeners were in perfect sympathy with him. "It was those fools down there. I have made them suffer, I can say," and then he turned to Stephen Strong. "Among the steerage there is an Alexandrian gipsy troupe. I have ordered them up to sing to us to-night, since Madame wished it," and he turned upon Millicent an air of deep devotion.

"Common ragged creatures, but one with some ankles and one with a voice. In any case, we must celebrate these ladies' last night."

And thus the terrible present end to their acquaintance fell about!

Nothing could have been more charming than the Prince was until dinner-time, and indeed through that meal, only he made Stephen Strong change places with him, so that he might be next Mrs. Hardcastle, much to that lady's delight.

"He is really too fascinating," she said, as she came into Tamara's cabin to fetch her for the evening meal. "I hardly think Henry would like his devotion to me. What do you think, dear?"

"I am sure he would be awfully jealous, Milly darling; you really must be careful," Tamara said. And with a conscious air of complacent pleasantly tickled virtue Mrs. Hardcastle led the way to the saloon.

It was not possible, Tamara thought, that anything so terribly unpleasant as the Prince's having too much champagne at dinner, could have accounted for his simply scandalous behavior after; and yet surely that would have been the kindest thing to say. But, no, it was not that.

This was, in brief, the scene which was enacted on the upper deck:

With the permission of the captain, the gipsy troupe were brought, and began their performance, tame enough at the commencement until the Prince gave orders for them to be supplied with unlimited champagne, and then the wildest dancing began. They writhed and gesticulated and undulated in a manner which made Millicent cling on to her chair, grow crimson in the face, and finally start to her feet.

But the worst happened when the Prince rose and, taking a tambourine, began, with a weird shriek, to beat it wildly, his eyes ablaze and his lips apart.

Then, seizing the chief dancer and banging it upon her head, he held his arm about her heaving breast, as she turned to him with a serpentine movement of voluptuous delight.

In a second he had caught hold of her, and had lifted and swung her far out over the dark blue waters, then, with a swirl to the side, held her suspended in the air above the open deck below.

"Ha, ha!" yelled the troupe, in frenzied pleasure, and, nimble as a cat, one rough dark man rushed down the ladder and caught the hanging woman in his arms. Then they all clapped and cheered and shrieked with joy, while the Prince, putting his hands in his pockets, pulled out heaps of gold and flung it among them.

"Back to h.e.l.l, rats!" he shouted, laughing. "See, you have frightened the ladies. You should all be killed!"

For Tamara and Millicent had risen, and with stately steps had quitted the scene.

It was all too terrible and too vulgarly melodramatic, Tamara thought, especially that touching of the woman and that flinging of the gold, the latter caused by the same barbaric instinct which made him throw the silver in the Sheikh's village by the moonlit Sphinx, only this was worse a thousandfold.

The next morning the two ladies left the ship at Brindisi before either the Prince or Stephen Strong was awake. Both were silent upon the subject of the night before, until Millicent at last said when they were in the train:

"Tamara--you won't tell Henry or your family, will you, dear? Because really, last night he was so fascinating--but that dancing! I am sure you feel, with me, we could have died of shame."

CHAPTER VI

When Tamara reached Underwood and saw a letter from her Russian G.o.dmother among the pile which awaited her, she felt it was the finger of fate, and when she read it and found it contained not only New Year's wishes, but an invitation couched in affectionate and persuasive terms that she should visit St. Petersburg, she suddenly, and without consulting her family, decided she would go.

"There is something drawing me to Russia," she said to herself. "One gets into the current of things. I felt it in the air. And why should I hesitate now I am free? Why should I not accept, just because one Russian man has horrified me. It is, I suppose, a big city, and perhaps I shall never see him there."

So she announced her decision to the dumfounded household, and in less than a week took the Nord Express.

"The Court, alas! is in mourning,"--her G.o.dmother had written,--"so you will see no splendid Court b.a.l.l.s, but I daresay we can divert you otherwise, Tamara, and I am so anxious to make the acquaintance of my G.o.dchild."

The morning after she left them Aunt Clara expressed herself thus at breakfast:

"I see a great and most unwelcome change in dear Tamara since she returned from Egypt, I had hoped Millicent Hardcastle would be all that was steadying and well-balanced as a companion for her, but it seems this modern restlessness has got into her blood. I tremble to think what ideas she will bring from Russia. Almost savages they are there!--She may be sent to Siberia or something dreadful, and we may never see her again."

"Oh! come Aunt Clara!" Tom Underdown protested, as he b.u.t.tered his toast. "I think you are a little behind the times. There is a Russian at Oxford with me and he is the decentest chap in the world. You speak as though they almost lived on raw fish!"

"My dear Tom," said Miss Underdown, severely. "I was reading only yesterday, in the 'Christian Clarion,' how one of their Emperors cut off everyone's head. Dreadful customs they have, it seems; and one of their Empresses--Catherine, I think; her name was. Well, dear, it is too shocking to speak of--and most people were sent to the mines!"

"Oh! hang it all, Aunt Clara, you can't have looked at the date! You can hunt up just those jolly kind of stories about our Henry VIII. if you want to, you know, and our Elizabeth wasn't the saint they made out. And as for Siberia, I am going there myself some day, on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Tamara will be all right. I wish to heavens she had taken me with her. We have got dry rot in this house, that is what is the matter with us!"

"Tom!" almost gasped Miss Underdown. "Your manners are extremely displeasing, and the tone of your remarks is far from what one could wish!"

Meanwhile Tamara was speeding on her way to the North, her interest and excitement in her journey deepening with each mile.

The snow and the vast forests impressed her from the train windows.

Every smallest shade made its effect upon her brain. Tamara was sensitive to all form and color. She was a person who apprehended things, and from the habit of keeping all her observations to herself perhaps the faculty of perception had grown the keener.

The silence seemed to be the first thing she remarked on reaching the frontier. The porters were so grave and quiet, with their bearded kindly faces, many of them like the saints and Biblical characters in Sunday-school picture books at home.

And finally she arrived at St. Petersburg, and found her G.o.dmother waiting for her on the platform. They recognized each other immediately. Tamara had several photographs of the Princess Ardacheff.

"Welcome, _ma filleule_," that lady cried, while she shook her hand.

"After all these years I can have you in my house."

They said all sorts of mutually agreeable things on their way thither, and they looked at each other shyly.

"She is not beautiful," ran the Princess' comments. "Though she has a superb air of breeding--that is from her poor mother--but her eyes are her father's eyes. She is very sweet, and what a lovely skin--yes, and eyelashes--and probably a figure when one can see beneath the furs--tall and very slender in any case. Yes, I am far from disappointed--far."

And Tamara thought:

"My G.o.dmother is a splendid looking lady! I like her bright brown eyes and that white hair; and what a queer black mole upon her left cheek, like an early eighteenth-century beauty spot. Where have I heard lately of someone with a mole------?