such a temptation. His eyes flashed, and with a rapid movement he turned
round and embraced the girl's lithe body with his arm.

A stop was put to further familiarities, however, for this little
adventure, which was very distasteful to Heideck, was suddenly
interrupted.

Without being perceived by those sitting at the table, the handsome
young page of the Prince had stepped from the door of the bungalow
with a plate of bananas and mangoes in his hand. For a few seconds he
regarded with flashing eyes the scene just described, and then, stealing
nearer with noiseless steps, flung, without saying a word, the plate
with the fruit with such vigour and unerring aim 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.