The Coming Conquest of England [17]
a golden bracelet on her slender brown wrist and bent, in order that he should notice it, so far over his shoulder that her glowing young breast touched his cheek. Prince Tchajawadse was of too passionate a temperament to long resist such a temptation. His eyes flashed, and with a rapid movement he turned round and embraced the girl's lithe body with his arm. A stop was put to further familiarities, however, for this little adventure, which was very distasteful to Heideck, was suddenly interrupted. Without being perceived by those sitting at the table, the handsome young page of the Prince had stepped from the door of the bungalow with a plate of bananas and mangoes in his hand. For a few seconds he regarded with flashing eyes the scene just described, and then, stealing nearer with noiseless steps, flung, without saying a word, the plate with the fruit with such vigour and unerring aim at the dark beauty, that the girl, with a loud cry, clasped her hand upon her wounded shoulder, while the fragments of china fell clattering to the ground. The next moment she and her companion had disappeared in hurried flight. The Prince's face was livid with rage; he sprang up and seized the riding-whip which lay near him. Heideck was on the point of intervening in order to save the disguised girl from a similar punishment to that which his new friend had meted out the day before to his Indian "boy," but he soon saw that his intervention was unnecessary. Standing bolt upright and with an almost disdainful quiver of his fair lips, the young page stepped straight up to the Prince. A half-loud hissing word, the meaning of which Heideck did not understand, must have suddenly pacified the wrath of the Russian, for he let his upraised arm fall and threw the whip on to the table. "Go and fetch us another plate of dessert, Georgi," he said quietly, as if nothing had happened. "It's a confounded nuisance, that these Indian vagabonds don't allow one a moment's peace." A triumphant smile played across the face of the Circassian beauty. She threw a friendly glance at Heideck and silently returned to the bungalow. Full of admiration and not without a slight emotion of envy for the happy possessor of such an entrancing female beauty, Heideck followed her with his eyes, as she tripped gracefully away with her lithe graceful figure. A remark was just on the point of passing his lips, acquainting the Prince that he had discovered the certainly very transparent secret of his disguised lady companion, when he was prevented doing so by a fresh incident. An English soldier in orderly's uniform stepped up to the table and handed Heideck, whom he must have known by sight, with a military salute, a letter. "From the Colonel," he said, "and I am ordered to say that the matter is urgent." With surprise, Heideck took the missive. It contained in polite, but yet somewhat decided terms, a request that Herr Hermann Heideck would favour him with a visit as soon as possible. This, considering the high official position that Colonel Baird occupied in Chanidigot, was tantamount to a command, which he was bound to obey without delay or further excuse. Baird was the commander-in-chief of the detachment stationed in Chanidigot, consisting of an infantry regiment, about six hundred strong, a lancer regiment of two hundred and forty sabres, and a battery of field artillery. As in all the other residences of the great Indian chiefs, the British Government had stationed here also a military force, strong enough to keep the Maharajah in respect and to nip all seeds of insurrection in the bud. As Colonel Baird, moreover, occupied the position of Resident at the Court of the Prince, and thus combined all the military and diplomatic power in his own person, he had come to be regarded as the real lord and master in Chanidigot. His bungalow was in the centre of the camp, which lay in the middle of a broad grassy plain. It consisted of a group of buildings which surrounded a quadrangular courtyard, adorned with exotics and a splashing fountain. As it appeared, he had given