"Of course you think me a goose," she said, "but I warned you I was
one. Tell me, shall I ever grow out of it--tell me, you who know?"
"If the teacher is young and handsome enough to make your heart beat,"
said her old companion. And then Millicent and the Prince joined them.
Mrs. Hardcastle's round blue eyes were flashing brightly, and her fresh
face was aglow with exercise and enjoyment.
"Tamara dear, you are too incorrigibly lazy. Why do you sit here
instead of taking exercise? and you have no idea of the interesting
things the Prince has been telling me. All about a Russian poet
called--oh, I can't pronounce the name, but who wrote of a devil--not
exactly Faust, you know, though something like it."
Tamara noticed that amused, whimsical, mocking gleam in the Cossack's
great eyes, but Millicent went gaily on, unconscious of anything but
herself.
"I mean those mythical, strange sort of devils who come to earth, you
know, and--and--make love to ladies--a sort of Satan like in Marie
Corelli's lovely book. You remember, Tamara, the one you were so funny
about, laughing when you read it."
"You mean 'The Demon' of Lermontoff, probably, Millicent, don't you?"
Tamara said. "A friend of my mother's translated it into English, and I
have known it since I was a child. I think it must be very fine in the
original," and she looked at the Prince.
In one moment his face became serious and sympathetic.
"You know our great poet's work, then?" he said, surprised. "One would
not have thought it!"
Then again Tamara's anger rose. There was always the insinuation in his
remarks, seemingly unconscious, and therefore the more irritating, that
she was a commonplace fool.
"Her name--the heroine's--is the same as my own," she said, gravely;
but there was a challenge in her eyes.
"Tamara!" he said. "Well--it could be--a devil might come your way, but
you would kneel and pray, and eat bonbons, and not listen to him."
"It would depend upon the devil," she said.
"Those who live the longest will see the most," and the Prince put back
his head and laughed with real enjoyment at his thoughts, just as he
had done when the two goats had butted at one another in the road.
Tamara felt her cheeks blaze with rage, but she would not enter the
lists, in spite of the late challenge in her eyes.
Mr. Strong had vacated Millicent's chair and taken his own. The party
soon settled into their legitimate places, and Tamara again took up her
book.