"
"My dear Princess Sofia," Karslake protested: "if I had known one word of
Chinese I could never have landed my job with your father."
"Why not?"
"He expressly stipulated that I should be ignorant of that language."
"What a silly condition to make!"
"Still, I daresay Prince Victor had his reasons."
"I can't imagine what ..."
"Possibly preferred a secretary who couldn't understand everything he said
to the servants. I've never pretended to know all Prince Victor's secrets,
you know."
After a little pause Sofia asked gently: "Did you really need the job so
badly, Mr. Karslake?"
"To get it meant more to me than I can tell you--almost as much as to hold
on to it does to-day."
Sofia turned her eyes away at this, and for the rest of the ride--they were
homeward bound from a matinee, having dropped Sybil Waring at her flat in
Mayfair--kept her thoughts to herself.
Only the most perfunctory civilities passed between them, in fact, until
they had been ushered into the study by Nogam, who advised them that Prince
Victor had ordered tea to be served there and had promised to be home in
good time for it.
The tea service was already set out on a little table beside the fireplace
in that room of secrets, whose normal atmosphere of brooding gloom was now
the darker for the deepening dusk. Only the tea itself remained to be
served, a special rite never performed in that household by hands more
profane than those of the major-domo, Shaik Tsin himself.
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