"He was telling her who I am," he thought, "and about the picture in
the catalogue."
In a few moments she turned to her sister and spoke to her, pointing
out at something in the scenery, and the same pantomime was repeated,
and again with the third sister.
"Did you see those girls talking about you, Mr. Carlton?" Miss Morris
asked, after they had left the car.
Carlton said it looked as though they were.
"Of course they were," said Miss Morris.
"That Englishman told the Princess Aline something about you, and then
she told her sister, and she told the eldest one. It would be nice if
they inherit their father's interest in painting, wouldn't it?"
"I would rather have it degenerate into an interest in painters
myself," said Carlton.
Miss Morris discovered, after she had returned to her own car, that she
had left the novel where she had been sitting, and Carlton sent Nolan
back for it. It had slipped to the floor, and the fly-leaf upon which
Carlton had sketched the Princess Aline was lying face down beside it.
Nolan picked up the leaf, and saw the picture, and read the inscription
below: "This is she. Do you wonder I travelled four thousand miles to
see her?"
He handed the book to Miss Morris, and was backing out of the
compartment, when she stopped him.
"There was a loose page in this, Nolan," she said. "It's gone; did you
see it?"
"A loose page, miss?" said Nolan, with some concern. "Oh, yes, miss; I
was going to tell you; there was a scrap of paper blew away when I was
passing between the carriages. Was it something you wanted, miss?"
"Something I wanted!" exclaimed Miss Morris, in dismay.
Carlton laughed easily. "It is just as well I didn't sign it, after
all," he said. "I don't want to proclaim my devotion to any Hungarian
gypsy who happens to read English."
"You must draw me another, as a souvenir," Miss Morris said.
Nolan continued on through the length of the car until he had reached
the one occupied by the Hohenwalds, where he waited on the platform
until the English maidservant saw him and came to the door of the
carriage.
"What hotel are your people going to stop at in Constantinople?" Nolan
asked.
"The Grande-Bretagne, I think," she answered.
"That's right," said Nolan, approvingly. "That's the one we are going
to. I thought I would come and tell you about it. And, by-the-way,"
he said, "here's a picture somebody's made of your Princess Aline. She
dropped it, and I picked it up. You had better give it back to her.
Well," he added, politely, "I'm glad you are coming to our hotel in
Constantinople; it's pleasant having some one to talk to who can speak
your own tongue."
The girl returned to the car, and left Nolan alone upon the platform.
He exhaled a long breath of suppressed excitement, and then gazed
around nervously upon the empty landscape.
"I fancy that's going to hurry things up a bit," he murmured, with an
anxious smile; "he'd never get along at all if it wasn't for me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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