Selden was sure he had never looked more handsome. His eyes were shining; his dark skin, usually a little sallow, was most becomingly flushed. He seemed in the gayest possible mood—even a reckless mood.
“No, do not rise,” said the king to his guests, motioned the prince to his side and put to him a stern question in his native tongue. The prince replied expansively; for an instant a scowl of displeasure threatened the king’s countenance, then he smiled blandly round upon the company.
“It was as I thought,” he said. “Fortunately no one was killed. Make your apologies, sir, to the ladies.”
The prince, with a mocking light in his eyes, bent over Mrs. Davis, and raised her plump hand to his lips.
“It was really impatience to be with you, madame, which caused the accident,” he said gaily. “A speed too swift—a road slippery from the rain....”
“Oh, what a fib!” broke in the lady, tapping him playfully with her lorgnette. But never for an instant did she suspect how great a fib it was!
The prince made his other greetings swiftly, then dropped into the seat beside Miss Davis, kissed her fingers as he had her mother’s, and spoke a low sentence into her ear. And Selden, noting the quick flush which swept across her cheek, noting the baron’s attentive eyes, noting the king’s benignant good-humour, understood in that instant the whole plot.
For a flash his eyes met those of the Countess Rémond, who was smiling cynically, maliciously, as though at some long-cherished vengeance about to be accomplished. Then he turned back to his plate, his heart hot with resentment. It was horrible that a girl like that should be sacrificed to the ambitions of a worldly mother! No wonder she was disillusioned! And to a libertine like the prince! Of that, of course, she could have no suspicion, and she would find it out too late. Of happiness there was not the slightest possibility.
Yet—was there not? He looked again at Myra Davis—there was something in her face that said she was not a fool, that she had had some experience of the world, so she must know something of the ways of princes. And it would be exciting to be the wife of a man like that—to be compelled to hold one’s place against all the other women....
And he would teach her many things.