“I presumed it was an orchid, princess, but I cannot agree with you that it is beautiful. Isn’t it responsible for the rather acrid, pungent odor that is mingled with the perfume of the lilies-of-the-valley?” I countered.
The Russian withdrew her eyes, the crimson lips all at once tightening.
“Ah, then you do not like my orchid? So many,” caressingly, “do not like it at first and then—afterward—they grow to love it.”
I sensed something intangible but none the less sinister in her words.
“Ow-een, you shall show to Aunt Sophie that some of my friends do value my so-wonderful orchid.”
She leaned forward, drew out the strange, fleshy-petaled thing, its thick stem oozing a sticky sap, and put it in Owen’s buttonhole with a proprietary air. The sickly, faintish odor pervaded the limousine.
Owen laughed, but I fancied that his laugh was not a happy one. He glanced at me in a half troubled fashion, and I smiled back broadly to express my confidence in him. After all, poor fellow, it wasn’t his fault if a lovely woman chose to distinguish him before the aunt of the girl he loved. Then I saw his eyes drop and his brow gather as he regarded the blossom—no, I can’t call it that, and I didn’t then, even in my own mind—the—thing—in his buttonhole.
“Thank you for the flower, princess. I must confess that I agree with Miss Delorme,” formally, “that its odor is far from agreeable. I presume you’re accustomed to it, aren’t you? Perhaps for some sentimental reason?”
“It may be an acquired taste, like olives,” I put in.
“My father was very fond of such orchids, Ow-een. He had many house of glass on his estate, full of these—experiment.” The princess spoke a bit carefully, her narrowed eyes shifting from Owen’s face to mine. “I have but few, yet more wonderful than this one. I have the great blood-red orchid that seem so solid, so yielding, at once—like the pulsing flesh of a child’s heart.”
I couldn’t restrain an exclamation of disgust and horror at the simile, and the princess straightened her slim form suddenly and changed her tone, with a gracious smile.
“And the thick white flower as of new-fallen snow,” she purred, “is one of the most lovely. But I see the chère tante is not interest’ in Irma Tchernova’s poor flowers,” plaintively. “Ah, perhaps, some day you will come, then, to see my jewels? You are a woman and must be interest’ in the jewels? I have many that are most fine, of the diamond, the ruby, the sapphire, the emerald,” she ended, leaning toward me engagingly with what I am sure she intended for a friendly smile.
Such was my interior impression of her exactly opposite feeling toward me that I withdrew almost involuntarily from her advances and she observed this with a slight twitch of her crimson lips. The situation might have become further strained, had we not stopped at that moment before the great wall about the Differdale house.
Owen sprang out to ring the bell, and waited with me beside the door, hoping—I felt so, at least—that Portia might appear when the gate swung open, instead of Fu Sing. Sure enough, she did, and put out her hand to him prettily, to thank him for having brought me home.
“Don’t thank me,” he said, motioning to the limousine drawn close to the curb. “The Princess Tchernova—oh, you two have already met, haven’t you?”
“Why, yes, I think we have met,” Portia drawled, her clear eyes upon the glowing garnet eyes of the Russian, who leaned back in the car almost as if she desired to escape notice.
