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