Princess Sophia’s father, the reigning Prince Leonard’s grandfather, was a man extraordinarily truculent in disposition, with a hand of iron under no velvet glove, and a temper frankly diabolical. His wife, the Grand Duchess Fedora, had died in giving birth to his only child, the Princess Sophia; and so long as the girl grew up strong and healthy, he had no thoughts of attempting to take to himself another partner. In this he acted contrarily to the bias of mankind, who would see in the education of a daughter the need of a mother’s hand. Not so thought Prince Demetrius. Had Sophia died, there would then be an undeniable necessity for marrying again, and so continuing his line, and disappointing the hopes of the cousin who stood next the throne, a man abhorrent to him; but as long as she lived, such a course appeared to him to be altogether outside the region of the vaguest consideration. Indeed, his first venture—though the word is scarcely apt for so chill a piece of business—had not been altogether fortunate. The Princess Fedora had been a mild and ailing woman, with weak and swimming{18} blue eyes, of an uncertain manner, and of notable mediocrity, and the secret satisfaction which her husband at first used to feel in making her jump soon lost its edge when he saw how easily, how unintentionally even, the thing could be done. A voice raised ever so little, one raucous and guttural exclamation, though half stifled, was enough to make that poor lady skip or swoon. In fine, he got tired of her swoonings, and was in danger, when she died, of losing the keenness of his overbearing and furious temper from mere contact with one so grossly meek and of so contemptible a spirit, even as a sword that has often to cut cotton-wool is soon blunted.

But before long Sophia made him feel his own man again. She grew up with the foot of the roe-deer and the eye of the hawk, and her imperative craving for excitement in some form or other kept her father on incessant tenterhooks as to what she might choose to do next. By no means the earliest of her escapades was at the age of ten, when he found her sitting with the grooms in the stable-yard, cross-legged on the horse-block, and smoking a cigarette. Her current governess, an estimable and incompetent Frenchwoman, who could play more scales in a minute and speak more words in five different languages with absolute correctness of accent than any governess yet known to exist on this imperfect earth, was bedewing the corner of the yard with impotent tears while Her Royal Highness smoked, and indulged between the whiffs in{19} shocking slang expressions to the English groom. At this prodigious moment her father came in from his ride, saw the governess cowering and wringing her hands in the corner, and the Hope of Rhodopé flicking the ash off her cigarette with the apparent mastery of habit. His face expressed no surprise, though he cast one furious glance at Mademoiselle Fifine, and dismounting from his horse, he walked to where his daughter was sitting. She had not seen him till he had well turned the corner into the yard, and knew that he must have observed her employment; and convinced of this, she had not resorted to what would have been the ordinary young lady’s pitiful subterfuge on such an extreme occasion, and either dropped her cigarette, or handed it behind her back to the groom. She was far too defiant and proud for such paltriness of conduct, and she smoked quietly on, a slight patter of fear in her heart, but outwardly calm.

Her father approached in silence, and as he drew near Sophia respectfully got up. Still in silence he sat down on the horse-block, and Sophia stood beside him. If he had only boxed her ears and called her a ‘dirty, vulgar little cat,’ she would have drawn a sigh of relief, but this silence was intolerably ominous. She was the first to break it.

‘I am smoking a cigarette, papa,’ she said frankly, ‘and I find it excellent.’

He did not look at her, but only took out his own cigarette-case and laid it by his side.

‘So I see,’ he said; ‘and when you have finished{20} that, you shall have another. These, too, are excellent cigarettes; I have plenty of them.’

‘Thanks; you are very kind, but I think one will be enough,’ remarked Sophia.

‘It may be, but you will have another if it is not.’ Then turning to the stablemen: ‘Stop where you are, all of you,’ he said. ‘I wish you to see the Princess Sophia smoking till she has had enough.’

Sophia understood, and her small spirit was up in indignant revolt. Already she had had nearly enough, and the cigarette was yet only half consumed. Each puff became a more palpable pang. Meantime Mademoiselle Fifine had approached.

‘Oh, sir,’ she said tremulously, ‘Princess Sophia has been very naughty, and I could not stop her. But make her stop; perhaps she will obey you. If she smokes any more, she will die of it, for already she is growing very pale.’

The Prince turned to the distressed governess with a malign light in his eye.

‘As you say, you could not stop her,’ he said. ‘You had better get home and pack your boxes. I do not choose to retain the services of one who cannot govern my daughter. You a governess!’ he cried, his voice rising suddenly to a tone that the late Princess Fedora well knew. ‘Great and merciful God!’

Sophia turned to her father.

‘Papa,’ she said, ‘I must go; I do not feel very well.{21}’

‘You shall stop exactly where you are,’ he replied. ‘If you choose to disgrace yourself, you shall do so in the way that I, and not you, prefer.’

‘If I stop here as you order me,’ she said, ‘will you promise not to send mademoiselle away? For indeed she did her best to stop me, but I have a stronger will than she.’

‘I shall send her away anyhow,’ he replied, ‘and as surely you shall stop here.’

The end was approaching; a paleness gathered on her cheek, and the meanness of the impending calamity appalled her.

‘Before all the stablemen?’ she pleaded. ‘Bob will laugh at me so.’

‘Most probably,’ said her father dryly; ‘and the others too. I shall not blame them.’

He sat tapping his boot with his riding-whip, not dreaming that he would be disobeyed, and Sophia suddenly saw her chance. Throwing away the end of her cigarette, she bolted round the corner of the stable like a ferreted rabbit, and plunged into the thick bushes which lined the road. Her father started up with an astonished oath, but he was too late, and he turned a gorgon face to the group of stablemen whom he had told to wait.

‘You set of idiotic deformities!’ he cried in a voice that would have made Fedora tremble for a fortnight. ‘How dare you stand there gaping! Get to your work, all of you! Never have I seen such a bandy-legged crew!{22}’

Sophia meanwhile crouched, quivering with a sickly feeling of nausea, among the bushes. She was half afraid, half exultant at what she had done. What the consequence might be she scarcely dared to think; lifelong imprisonment in a dungeon seemed terribly possible. But she had revolted; she had asserted her independence, and gloried in the deed, like an early Christian martyr.

At the age of fourteen she proposed to her English tutor that he should elope with her, and that they should together seek an appointment in a circus. Failing his acceptance, she got him to teach her écarté. She was quickly fascinated with the game and its subtly compounded mixture of luck and skill. She insisted that he play her for counters, and her exultation at winning a hundred of these off him in the course of an hour expressed itself, as it subsequently appeared, prophetically.

‘When I grow up, Mr. Buckhurst,’ she said, ‘I shall be a gambler.’

And Mr. Buckhurst, counting out ten red and five white, thought it extremely probable that she would.

But the games of écarté came to the ears of the Prince, and after a thunderous dismissal of Mr. Buckhurst, he sent for his daughter.

‘I hear you are in the habit of playing écarté,’ he said. ‘To-night you shall play with me. But I do not play for counters, like Mr. Buckhurst; I play for francs.{23}’

‘That will be even more delightful!’ exclaimed Sophia excitedly. ‘Mr. Buckhurst would not play me for francs. He said that gambling was not a proper employment for children. I am so glad you disagree with him. How delightful it will be to play for real money!’

‘You shall see. Perhaps losing is not so pleasant as winning.’

‘But it will surely be exciting,’ said Sophia.

The Prince dined at six, and after dinner he sent for his daughter.

‘I have twenty francs, and some pennies,’ she said, turning out her purse. ‘That will last a long time. I have been saving up, which is slow work; but perhaps in this way I shall soon get twenty more.’

‘Perhaps,’ said her father. ‘What were you saving up for?’

Sophia flushed a little.

‘A Christmas present for Bob,’ she said.

Prince Demetrius found no reply handy, and he cut for deal.

Now, the Prince was one of the first écarté players in Europe, and he had resolved to teach his daughter a lesson on the same lines as the lesson he had proposed to teach her in the stable-yard. He meant to go on playing till Sophia was shorn of all her twenty francs, and after that of all her pennies as well.

Sophia marked the king in the first hand, and turned it up in the second, securing the odd trick on each occasion. On the third deal her father{24} held five small trumps, but only made the odd, Sophia holding knave and ten. On the fourth deal Sophia won the odd trick, and no king was marked, and her father pushed across to her four francs. The second game was but a repetition of the first, only Prince Demetrius in this case failed even to secure the odd. He growled out an oath as he gave Sophia five francs, and that observant young person recorded a silent vow that she personally would take her losings with the same calm demeanour as she certainly intended to cultivate when she was so fortunate as to win. But it was terribly exciting work to play for whole silver francs, and every fibre and nerve in that wholesome little body was stretched to play her best. The third game she also won, and remarked consolingly to the Prince:

‘You have had the worst of the cards, sir,’ a phrase she had picked up from the retired Buckhurst.

An hour later this strange pair were still at the game. The lesson Prince Demetrius had determined to give his daughter was still unlearned, for by her on the table glittered three gold napoleons, and some seventeen francs in silver. She had enjoyed a most surprising run of luck, and what was still more surprising to her father, she had played throughout a safe and sober game, the very essence and spirit of scientific success. Several times she had elected to play on a hand which, as he saw when she played it, justified itself clearly{25} indeed to the adept, but held dazzling improbabilities to the beginner, with a change of two cards, or perhaps one. At other times her bolder front had reason to back it. Once, for instance, the Prince turned up the king, and proposed for cards. She, with a moderate hand, refused, since the odd trick would give him the game, and her chance of saving it lay in that. As luck would have it, he had on this occasion held four small clubs and one diamond, the same being trumps. She had held two diamonds, a fair hand of hearts, and won all the tricks. The consequence of all this was that at the end of an hour the thought of the lesson he should give her had yielded place in the Prince’s mind to an increased feeling of respect for his daughter, so proficient was her play, though only a beginner, and to the adept’s joy in the game considered as a game and unconcerned with moralities.

Nine o’clock came, and an hour after the Princess’s bedtime. But when a raw-boned governess appeared at the door, and stood patiently waiting, the Prince presently answered her with so tigerish a snarl, and so strong an expression of his feelings toward her—Sophia had just marked the king—that that lady retired to her bedroom in precipitate confusion, and remembered him in her prayers. The pile by the Princess had grown to a matter of eighty francs; the Prince had made more than one bad mistake, and instead of teaching his daughter a lesson, he had caused an unfounded suspicion to{26} arise in her mind that he was only a player of the second order.

Alas for the moral cause! That evening, which he had designed to be so salutary a piece of education, was in reality the direct ancestor of the profuse gaming-tables in the State of Rhodopé, and the threatener of its entire ruin as a nation. Not only did Sophia become convinced that games at cards were more entrancing than any other adventure, even than trying to elope with a reluctant English tutor, but several times during the game her father had exclaimed: ‘You have the luck of the devil, Sophia!’ and such an opinion from so expert a judge could not fail to produce a deep impression on her, and fill her with wild hopes. Indeed, the truth of it, to give the devil his due, was blatantly obvious. Doubtful cards prospered in her hand, good cards exacted the full tale of their merit, and what seemed impossible winners sometimes leaped in at the end, established and trick-winning. Even Prince Demetrius, who knew more than most men of the favours of the fickle jade, was impressed by the decisions of Fortune. It seemed idle to struggle, and when on the stroke of midnight he rose from the table, leaving Sophia with a balance of a hundred and seventeen francs, he almost regretted that they had not played for larger stakes, for the winner ever commanded his respect. His daughter gathered up her money with carefully assumed carelessness, but inward exultation.{27}

‘You had the worst of the cards throughout, papa,’ she observed again.

‘I had,’ he said, then paused, and the gambler within him leaped to the surface. ‘Oh, Sophia,’ he said, ‘with such a run of luck, and, to do you justice, your own intuition, translated into terms of roulette, you would in a year make a fortune at Monte Carlo sufficient to buy the Ionian Isles.’

Her face lit up as the face of some village genius might light up one receipt of a favourable opinion from a publisher about his manuscript poems.

‘Oh, papa,’ she cried, ‘how splendid! Will you take me there?’

And thus the moral lesson fled shrieking from the room.

It was not only at the cards that a sort of spell seemed to shower blessings on the girl; in that crisp and invigorating air she grew up to tall and stately development, and the breezes of the mountains and the perfume of flowers lent her their beauty. Other cosmetics she had none, and when her maid pressed on her curlers for the hair, and washes for the face, and dentrifices for her milk-white teeth, she threw the obnoxious aids behind the grate. The superlative mildness of her mother seemed to have cancelled with the ferocious temper of her father, and to have produced in their daughter a winning yet imperial graciousness that touched the heart of the people. It was her joy to scamper over the country on her Hungarian horse, or to divide the waters of the Adriatic with a plunge as of some{28} quick-diving bird from the rocks, or in the harvesttime she would wield a scythe in the fields, and laugh to see how the other girls, daughters of the farmers, and inured to toil, would vainly strive to keep pace with her fallen swathes. Yet it was with a wonderful dignity that she received her father’s guests, and she was royal to her finger-tips.

But most of all she loved the hour when the lamps were lit, and the curtains drawn, and she and her father, or she and some visitor to the Court, sat down and played écarté or picquet. Sometimes a baccarat-table would be made up, and that was even more enchanting, for she loved the decision of pure chance, and bowed to it with the unwavering devotion of the thoroughbred and single-hearted gambler. They were no longer simple francs which were pushed across the table; bright gold pieces scurried to and fro in breathless alternation, and she loved to think of the miner who delved sweating in the earth, and the gold-dust carried in boxes oversea, to supply the sinews of her amusement.

The fame of her beauty and the charm of the girl, without which beauty is a mask and a cipher, had gone out widely into the world, and already, while she was not yet seventeen, royal blood and more than regal dulness were kneeling at her feet. It was the frankness of her refusal, her sheer astonishment at the unsuccessful, that kept others aloof. To marry seemed to her an inconceivable thing. She had not yet met her match either in the gallop or in rubicon bezique, a game which occupied her{29} greatly for a year or two; and to pass a lifetime with a man who could not keep up with her in a scamper across country, or who would be a mere whipped puppy in her ruthless hands at the cards, was outside the bounds of possibility. Some of these unfortunate suitors were strangely, almost comically, below the mark. They fell off their horses in the afternoon, and were perpetually plunged in the swollen waters of the rubicon in the evening. To pretend even to wear the guise of sympathy for their inane misfortunes was a histrionic feat of which she was hopelessly incapable.

English travellers who have visited Rhodopé have always found themselves greatly at home there, for the character of the two nations is marvellously alike. To those of Rhodopé no less than to us has been given a sublime self-sufficiency, moved only to a smiling and wondering tolerance at the screams of France or the telegrams of incomprehensible Emperors. The insular position of England accounts for this trait in our case, and the walls of mountains round Rhodopé—as inviolable as the sea—in the other. Both nations are profoundly tenacious rather than assertive, both have a certain habit of stalking along to fulfil an immutable destiny, an attitude which is characteristic of the races of the North and shrewdly aggravating to those of the South. The inhabitants of Rhodopé are neither to be driven nor to be led: they go their own way with an almost sublime conscious{30}ness of the futility of every other way, or, when they choose, stand as still as trees planted by the waterside. It is unnecessary to remind the reader how closely their royal line is related to our own, and thus it has come about from community of blood no less than of nature that many of the Court appointments are held by English-speaking folk, English also is the language of diplomacy there, a unique phenomenon.

From her seventeenth to her twentieth year Sophia lived much in the society of the English, and her greatest friend at this time was Lady Blanche Amesbury, only daughter of the Marquis of Abbotsworthy, who held the post of English Minister at the Court of Prince Demetrius. The two were in many ways much alike: both loved to be in the saddle or the sea all day, and community of tastes brought about a real friendship. It was to Blanche that the Princess confided the deficiencies of the Grand Duke Nicholas, a youth of about twenty-three, who was then being put through his pre-matrimonial paces at Amandos. He was hopelessly in love with his cousin Sophia, and the latter was prepared to give him a fair trial. Indeed, the wooing of the Princess Sophia was not unlike the fairy stories in which princesses sit at the top of hills of glass calmly ready to wed whoever can ride a horse up to their side.

‘I do not require much,’ said this candid young lady to Blanche, as they sat waiting for Nicholas to go out riding with them. ‘The man who marries{31} me must be passably good-looking. My cousin Nicholas is more than that—indeed, I suppose he might be called handsome—and he must do one or two things well. He must either ride very well, or talk very well, or play cards very well, or if he only plays roulette and games of that kind, he must lose very well. Voilà tout!’

Blanche considered a moment.

‘We shall see about his riding this afternoon,’ she said. ‘As far as his talking goes, I am afraid he will not do on that count. And this evening, no doubt, you will see how he plays. But there are other things—he is very rich; that is a good thing.’

‘How can you think me so mercenary!’ cried the Princess. ‘Besides, I have the luck of the devil—papa has told me so more than once—and so I shall win enough at cards to keep my head above water. Here he is! Really he looks quite distinguished!’

The riding question was soon settled, for the Grand Duke put his toes out and his heels in, and sawed the autumn air with a sharp elbow. And Sophia shook her head to Blanche as they came in.

‘There is but one more chance,’ she said.

She and her cousin played rubicon bezique that night, and at first Sophia thought that after all he might do. He played quickly, and marked treble bezique in the first game, which raised him in her estimation. But, oh Heaven! the humiliation which followed! He showed a miser’s greed for{32} his tale of tens and aces; he haggled over mere francs, refusing to toss double or quits in napoleons; he preferred to make certain of a small score rather than risk a large one; he let out incidentally that he could not swim (‘Without any sense of shame, my dear Blanche, without any sense of shame,’ said the Princess next day); and finally, after four games, he said he was sure she was tired of bezique (meaning that he was), kissed her hand, offered her his own, coupled with his heart.

His visit was curtailed, and he left two days afterwards. Prince Demetrius gloomily threatened his daughter with the prospect of being an old maid all her life, but she only put her pretty nose in the air, and said ‘Hoots!’—a word she had picked up from Blanche, and thought very expressive of certain shades of feeling.