‘Well! A Prince ought to marry a Princess.’
‘But he doesn’t want to. He wants to give up all his royal rights, and live as a subject. He wants to marry a woman who isn’t a Princess.’
‘Is she rich?’
‘Her father is,’ said the girl. ‘Oh, Dad! can’t you guess? He—he loves me.’ Her head fell on Theodore’s shoulder and she began to cry.
The millionaire whistled a very high note. ‘Nell!’ he said at length. ‘And you? Do you sort of cling to him?’
‘Dad,’ she answered, ‘you are stupid. Do you imagine I should worry myself like this if I didn’t?’ She smiled through her tears. She knew from her father’s tone that she had accomplished a victory.
‘It’s a mighty queer arrangement,’ Theodore remarked. ‘But of course if you think it’ll be of any use, you had better go down and tell your Prince Eugen that that million can be fixed up, if he really needs it. I expect there’ll be decent security, or Sampson Levi wouldn’t have mixed himself up in it.’
‘Thanks, Dad. Don’t come with me; I may manage better alone.’
She gave a formal little curtsey and disappeared. Racksole, who had the talent, so necessary to millionaires, of attending to several matters at once, the large with the small, went off to give orders about the breakfast and the remuneration of his assistant of the evening before, Mr George Hazell. He then sent an invitation to Mr Felix Babylon’s room, asking that gentleman to take breakfast with him. After he had related to Babylon the history of Jules’ capture, and had a long discussion with him upon several points of hotel management, and especially as to the guarding of wine-cellars, Racksole put on his hat, sallied forth into the Strand, hailed a hansom, and was driven to the City. The order and nature of his operations there were too complex and technical to be described here.
When Nella returned to the State bedroom both the doctor and the great specialist were again in attendance. The two physicians moved away from the bedside as she entered, and began to talk quietly together in the embrasure of the window.