The oracle of this universal truth was Rollo, palpitating, his immaculate coat stained with earth, earth-stains on his cheeks, and his breast labouring in an excitement which only anxiety for his master could effect. But St. George hardly saw him. His eyes were fixed on some one who stood towering before the dais, like the old prints of the avenging goddesses. Clad in the hideous stripes which boards of directors consider de rigueur for the soul that is to be won back to the normal, stood the woman Elissa, who, by all counts of Prince Tabnit, should have been singing a hymn with Mrs. Manners and Miss Bella Bliss Utter in the Bitley Reformatory, in Westchester County, New York.
"Stop!" she cried in that perfect English which is not only a rare experience but a pleasant adventure, "what new horror is this?"
To Prince Tabnit's face, as he looked at her, came once more that indefinable change--only this time nearer and more intimately explainable, as if something ethereal, trained to delicate lines, like smoke, should suddenly shape itself to a menace. St. George saw the woman step close to the dais, he saw Olivia's eyes questioning him, and in the hurried rising of the peers and of the High Council he heard Rollo's voice in his ear: "It's a gr'it go, sir," observed Rollo respectfully, "the woman has things to tell, sir, as people generally don't know. She's flew the coop at the place she was in--it seems she's been shut up some'eres in America, sir; an' she got 'old of the capting of a tramp boat o' some kind--one o' them boats as smells intoxicating round the 'atches--an' she give 'im an' the mate a 'andful o' jewelry that she'd on 'er when she was took in an' 'ad someways contrived to 'ang on to, an' I'm blessed hif she wasn't able fer to steer fer the island, sir--we took 'er aboard the yacht only this mornin' with 'er 'air down her back, an' we've brought 'er on here. An' she says--men can be gr'it beasts, sir, an' no manner o' mistake," concluded Rollo fervently.
And a little hoarse voice said in St. George's ear: "Mr. St. George, sir--we ain't late, are we? We been flirtin' de ger-avel up dat ka-liff since de car-rack o' day."
And there was Bennietod, with an edge of an old horse pistol showing beneath his cuff; and, round-eyed and alert as a bird newly alighted on a stranger sill, Little Cawthorne stood; and the sight put strength into St. George, and so did Little Cawthorne's words: "I didn't know whether they'd let us in or not," he said, "unless we had on a plaited décolletté, with biases down the back."