第69章

Dressed in gold-glittering petticoats and jackets, which left a hand's breadth of light brown skin visible round the waist, with gold coins upon the blue-black hair, they executed their dances to the monotonous tone of weird musical instruments upon a carpet spread in the middle of the tent.The bare arms, the bones and toes of their little feet were adorned with gold bracelets set with pearls and rings bedizened with jewels.Though their motions had nothing in common with the bacchanalian abandon of other national dances, yet the graceful play of their supple, lithe limbs was seductive enough to enchant the spectators.The Indians threw silver coins to the dancers, but the Russians, according to their native custom, clapped applause and never tired of demanding amid shouts of delight a repetition of the dance.

Amid the general wantonness there was only one who remained morose and anxious, and this was Heideck, the newly-made captain in the Russian army.

He knew that it would be easy for Morar Gopal's shrewdness to find him in case he had something to report.And that the Hindu did not make his appearance was for him a disheartening proof that his servant had not hitherto succeeded in discovering Edith's whereabouts or in obtaining any certain news of her fate.

What did it avail him, that after much thought he had already evolved a plan for her liberation, if there was no possibility of putting himself in communication with her!

Believing her to be kept prisoner in a harem tent, his idea was to send Morar Gopal with a letter to her, fully convinced that the wily Indian would succeed by stratagem and bribery in reaching her.

Before the banquet he had negotiated with one of the Indian rajahs for the purchase of an ox-waggon, and if Edith could by his letter be prevailed upon to make an attempt at flight, it would not in his view be very difficult to bring her under Morar Gopal's protection to Ambala, where she would again find herself among her English countrymen.

But this plan was unrealisable so long as he did not even know where Edith was.Incapable of bearing any longer this condition of uncertainty, he was just on the point of leaving the tent in order, at all risks, to hunt for the beloved lady, when a Russian dragoon stepped behind his chair and informed him with a military salute that a lady outside the tent wished to speak to the Captain.

Full of blissful hope that it was Edith he jumped up and hurried out.But his longing eyes sought in vain for Captain Irwin's widow.Instead of her whom he sought he perceived a tall female form in the short jacket and short-cut coloured dress which he had seen on his journeys among the inhabitants of the Georgian mountains.The hair and the face of the girl were almost entirely hidden by a scarf wound round the head.Only when, at his approach, she pushed it back somewhat he perceived who stood before him.

"Georgi--you here!" he exclaimed with surprise."And in this dress?"He had indeed reason to be surprised, for he had not again seen the handsome, blonde page, to whom he chiefly owed his life, since their meeting on the way to the place of execution.

When on the evening of that for him so eventful day he asked Prince Tchajawadse about Georgi he had received only a short, evasive reply, and the Prince's knitted brows showed such evident anger that he well perceived that something must have taken place between them, and so it appeared to him to be best to him not to mention again the name of the Circassian girl.

When the detachment started he had in vain looked for the page who had hitherto been inseparable from "his master," and only the anxiety for Edith, which was so much nearer his heart, was the cause that he had not thought much about the inexplicable disappearance of the disguised girl.

He had certainly least of all expected to find her here, so far from the Russian headquarters, and in woman's dress to boot.But the Circassian did not seem inclined to give him detailed information.

"I have begged you to come out to see me, sir," she said, "because I did not want the Prince to see me.I met your Indian servant.