"Miss Gilmore, I——" then he smiled in his feeble, nothing-matters manner. "Of course that's a question I can't answer, and you oughtn't to ask. But life's much too stupid for one to take offence when it isn't meant. And I don't suppose you meant any, did you?"
"No, on the contrary. I should very much like to be your friend," I said, very earnestly.
"Would you? I daresay you would. Lots of people would like to be the friend of the Duke Ladislas' eldest son. If they only knew! What humbug it all is."
"I am not a humbug," I protested.
"I daresay you have a motive in that clever little brain of yours. No clever people do anything without one, and they both agree you're clever and sharp. I wonder what it is. Tell me."
"'They both?'" I repeated, catching at his words.
His face clouded with passing doubt and then cleared as he understood. "I'm getting stupid again; but you don't get stupid. You know what Henriette and Gustav are in my life. You've spotted it, of course. It saves a heap of trouble to have some one to think for you. You mayn't believe it—you like to think for yourself; but it does, a regular heap of bother. And after all, the chief thing in life is to dodge trouble, isn't it?"
"No." I said it with so much energy that he laughed.
"That's only your point of view. You're American, you see. But I'm right. I hate taking trouble. Of course I know things. They think I don't, but I do. And I don't care."
"What things do you know?"