“Your Majesty is a hundred times wrong, now.”
“No, no, duke; really! I count my days now and I fall into brown studies.”
“Sire, the lady feels that she will never meet a jollier companion and that is what makes her mad.”
“Dash me if I know how you manage it, duke; you lure all the fair sex after you, as if you were still twenty. At that age, man may pick and choose: but at mine—women lead us by the nose.”
The marshal laughed.
“My lord, if the countess is finding diversion elsewhere, the more reason for us to find ours where we can.”
“I do not say that she is finding but that she will seek it.”
“I beg to say that such a thing was never known.”
“Duke,” said the King, rising from the seat he had taken, “I should like to know by a sure hand whether the countess has gone home.”
“I have my man Rafté, but it seems to me that the countess has gone sure enough. Where but straight home do you imagine she would go?”