That tall man who came in just before you was Prince Oscar Oscarovitch." "Oh yes," he said lightly; "I recognised the brute." "The brute?
Dear me, that is rather severe.

Then you know His Highness ?" she asked in a low, almost eager, voice.
"There are not many men in the Near or Far East who have not some cause to know His Highness," he replied in a serious tone, tinged by the suspicion of a sneer.

"He is about the finest specimen of the well-veneered savage that even Russia has produced for the last century.

He is a brilliant scholar, statesman, and soldier; delightful among his equals--or those he chooses to consider so--charming to men, and, they say, almost irresistible to women; but to his opponents and his inferiors, a pitiless brute-beast without heart, or soul, or honour.
A curious mixture: but that's the man." "How awful!" murmured Nitocris.

"Fancy a man like that being in such a position!" But, although she did not understand why, she had heard his harshly-spoken words with a positive sense of relief.