“Back to your people?”
She looked at him for a moment. He had allowed himself to sneer. Her manner, as she went on without taking any notice of his question, proved that Lady Craigennoch had been right in saying that she was a lady.
“My work will be done,” she said. “From the first moment I knew the Prince I determined to use my influence in this way. He only—he only needed a little encouragement.”
“And a little money?”
“I gave him one, you’re giving him the other. We shall both be repaid by his success.”
“You’re a very strange woman,” he said. Probably he did not know how straight and hard his eyes were set on her; they could not leave her. What a pity it was that she would not go with the Prince—as his wife, or even (to use Lady Craigennoch’s charitably evasive phrase) as she was now. To set the Prince on the seat of his ancestors was not an exploit that appealed to Mr Byers; but to set this woman on a throne would be worth—well, how much? Mr Byers detected this question in his own heart; he could not help reducing things to figures. “Why don’t you go with him?” he asked bluntly.
“It would prejudice him,” she answered simply, folding her hands in her lap.
Then she stretched out a hand towards him and said suddenly, with a sudden quiver in her voice, “I talk to you like this, and all the time I’m wanting to go down on my knees and kiss your hands, because you’re doing this.”
The lean hand held the square jaw; the attitude was a favourite one with Mr Byers; and his eyes were still on her.
“Yes, that’s what I want to do,” she said with a nervous laugh. “It’s so splendid of you.” Her breath came fast; her eyes were very bright. At that moment Mr Byers wished that the quick breath and the bright eyes were for him himself, not for the helper of the Prince; and for that moment he forgot Mrs Byers and the babies in Portland Place; it was years since he had had any such wish about any woman; he felt a sympathy with Prince Julian, who had almost cried when he signed the Manifesto, because, if he mounted the throne, Ellen Rivers would leave him.