But for the immediate present, and especially in the paramount business of having a good time, Karslake was fairly a necessity. He thought of everything and forgot nothing, was ever fertile of fresh expedient if the pastime of a moment began to pall, and was capable of sustained fits of irresponsible gaiety which enchanted Sofia, so well did they chime with her own eagerness for sheer fun.

Decidedly she would have been lost without Sybil Waring; but without Karslake she would have been forlorn.

XI

HEARTBREAK

Not yet prepared to admit it even to herself, in her heart Sofia knew she prized the companionship of Karslake for something more than the mere amus.e.m.e.nt it afforded her: there was a deeper feeling she would not name.

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.

Nor did she ever quite forget how long he had worshipped with unostentatious devotion at her lowly shrine of the caisse in the Cafe des Exiles, and how shabbily she had rewarded his admiration--never once, in those many months, with so much as a smile--and how unresentful had been his acceptance of her half-feigned, half-real indifference to his existence.

But whenever her reflections took that back-turning she would recall the man who had talked to Karslake in the cafe, that day so long ago, of his own humble past as a 'bus-boy in Troyon's in Paris, and who on leaving had given Sofia herself that odd look of half-recognition tempered by bewilderment.

She tried once to draw Karslake about this acquaintance of his, but Karslake's memory proved unusually sluggish.

"No-o," he drawled after a tolerably long pause for thought--"can't say I place the chap you mean, can't seem somehow to think back that far, you know. One meets such a lot of people, first and last, they talk such a lot of tosh--"

"But it couldn't have been only tosh you were talking," the girl persisted, "because--_I_ remember--you were so keen about keeping what you said secret, you spoke the strangest language together most of the time. I could hear every word"--she had already explained about the freak acoustics of the Cafe des Exiles--"and not one meant anything to me."

"Stupid of me, but I simply can't think what it could have been."

"I can--now."

Karslake looked askance at Sofia.

"Since I've heard so much Chinese spoken by the servants--now I come to think of it"--Sofia's eyes grew bright with triumph--"I'm sure it must have been Chinese you were speaking to the man I mean."

"Impossible," Karslake p.r.o.nounced calmly.

"But you do know Chinese, don't you?"

"Not a syllable."

Sofia opened her lips to protest, but delayed to study Karslake's face intently. He didn't try to escape her scrutiny, he even seemed to court it; but there was a curious, quizzical look in his eyes, those half-smiling lips had a whimsical droop.

"Mr. Karslake!" Sofia announced, severely, "you're fibbing."

"Nice thing to say to me."

"You do speak Chinese--confess."

"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 ..."

"Possibly preferred a secretary who couldn't understand everything he said to the servants. I've never pretended to know all Prince Victor's secrets, you know."

After a little pause Sofia asked gently: "Did you really need the job so badly, Mr. Karslake?"

"To get it meant more to me than I can tell you--almost as much as to hold on to it does to-day."

Sofia turned her eyes away at this, and for the rest of the ride--they were homeward bound from a matinee, having dropped Sybil Waring at her flat in Mayfair--kept her thoughts to herself.

Only the most perfunctory civilities pa.s.sed between them, in fact, until they had been ushered into the study by Nogam, who advised them that Prince Victor had ordered tea to be served there and had promised to be home in good time for it.

The tea service was already set out on a little table beside the fireplace in that room of secrets, whose normal atmosphere of brooding gloom was now the darker for the deepening dusk. Only the tea itself remained to be served, a special rite never performed in that household by hands more profane than those of the major-domo, Shaik Tsin himself. And this last could be counted upon not to put in appearance until Nogam took him word that Victor was waiting.

So, having laid aside her furs and satisfied herself, by a seemingly aimless but in fact exacting survey, that the abominable Sturm was not skulking anywhere in the shadows, Sofia established herself on a lounge that faced the fireplace, while Karslake stood before the fire, looking down with an expectant smile of which she was but half aware.

"Aren't you going to forgive me?" he asked, quietly, after a time.

Sofia withdrew a pensive gaze from the ruddy bed of coals.

"For what?"

"You were kind enough to call it merely fibbing."

"I'm still thinking about that."

In fact, she had been thinking of nothing else. There was so much to be considered. Imprimis, that Karslake had been guilty of practising a deception upon her father. Deceit in itself was one form of treachery. And how often had Victor stressed to her the dangers of his position, surrounded by nameless but implacable enemies who would stick at no infamy to compa.s.s his ruin!

But if she told him that Karslake understood Chinese she would lose her friend forever--no question about that. Victor would not hesitate an instant--indeed, Sofia felt sure he was only waiting for some such pretext to get rid of his secretary. She was anything but un.o.bserving, this child of Soho, whose wits had been sharpened in the sophisticated atmosphere of a French restaurant; and more than once she had seen Victor's face duplicate the expression Papa Dupont's had so often a.s.sumed on his discovering that some patron of the cafe was taking too personal an interest in the pretty young dame du comptoir. A look of insensate jealousy ...

To risk forfeiting the comradeship that had grown to be so dear? Or to be constructively derelict in her duty as a daughter?

A difficult choice to make; but Sofia made it honestly. In point of fact, she a.s.sured herself, coldly, there was no choice, there was only one thing she could do under the circ.u.mstances. And she hardened her heart and eyes as she rose to face Karslake on more equal terms.

But when she saw him waiting patiently, with that friendly smile of his she knew so well, she hesitated long enough to permit his antic.i.p.ating her with a quiet question:

"Well, Princess Sofia?"

And then, amazingly, her tongue betrayed her, the phrases she had framed so carefully vanished utterly from out her mind; and she heard herself saying in rather tremulous accents:

"It's all right. I shan't tell."

"About my understanding Chinese?"