“I am very sorry, sir, but that is quite impossible.”
The fair man turned to the dark one with a smile, and said something rapidly in a foreign tongue, upon which the dark young man produced a cardcase and presented Jones with his card, saying, “Please, you will give the docteur,” in broken and very foreign-sounding English.
Jones, seeing the word “Prince” prefixed to a, to him, unreadable and unpronounceable name, was somewhat startled, for the title meant royalty to his British mind. For a moment he was puzzled; then, saying, “Please, will you step this way?” he hurried along the bare stone hall, and ushering the distinguished visitors into the cheerless waiting-room, with the skylight, rows of dining-room chairs against the walls, and an old dining-table, whose dingy cloth was strewn with as dingily-covered volumes of illustrated journals, hurried to his master with the card.
Hugh glanced at it listlessly, read “Le Prince Andriocchi,” and laid it aside. Stray patients, arriving at odd moments, were always dismissed with a certain formula, and Hugh was not giving a second thought to the Prince Andriocchi or his card when an anxious voice piped at his elbow, “What am I to say, sir?” and turning, he saw Jones watching him in evident dismay.
“Say?” he asked. “To whom?”
“To the prince, sir! I took him into the waiting-room.”
“You took him into the waiting-room?” repeated Hugh, hardly believing his own ears.
For a patient to be admitted outside regular hours and against all rule was a most unwonted occurrence, and by Jones the impregnable, the unassailable! Had a golden talisman—No! such an idea was a treason to the faithful old servant.
“I thought as he was a prince, sir,” stammered Jones.
“Oh, well, never mind! I will explain to him that I cannot see him now,” said Dr. Paull, good-naturedly, rising and going to the waiting-room.