“They gave it to me. You only said for the gentleman who dined with your friends.”
“Then you read it?” she asked, blushing.
“Yes. How I wish I were the rightful owner of it!”
“Why didn’t he come?” she asked again.
“He’s going to write and explain.”
“And you really came because——”
“May I tell you already? Or have you guessed already?”
She blushed again.
“I don’t see what else the prince could do, you know,” she said. “He ought, of course, never to have gone to the ball at all.”