"And now, when you can tear yourselves apart, you two," said Blair, with a smile, addressing the two ladies, who displayed a great disposition to linger under the trees, and talk for the remainder of their lives, "perhaps we'd better go to the house."
"And what a lovely place it is!" exclaimed the princess. "I always thought the Villa Capri the beautifulest house in the world, but it is a hovel compared to this. Oh how happy you must be, dear!" she added in a whisper.
"Yes," said Margaret, with her quiet smile; "yes I am very fond of the Court, but I think I am happy because I am the wife of its master!"
Florence glanced at Blair as he strode along beside the prince in earnest conversation.
"What a splendid fellow he is, dear," she said in a low voice, not altogether free from awe. "Do you know, if I weren't so fond of him—you aren't jealous?—I think I should be a little afraid of him. The stories we are always hearing about him since we came to England! It is always how Lord Blair—they always call him Blair!—rode in such and such a race, and how he swam such and such a river, and fought such and such a man, and what a magnificent place Leyton Court is, and how lovely and famous the Countess of Ferrers had become! Why, when some people heard we were coming to stay with you they looked at us as if we were going down to Windsor Castle!"
Margaret laughed with all her old light-heartedness.
"You always were a terrible flatterer, Florence!" she said.
"Now, that's a shame, for it prevents me saying what I was going to remark; but I'll say it all the same. Margaret, do you know that I should scarcely have known either of you?"
"Really? We have both grown so gray!"
"You have both grown so ridiculously young!" retorted the princess emphatically. "I don't mean that you ever looked old, that's absurd of course; but you were so grave and quiet and sad. Don't you remember the first day I saw you I said you reminded me of mamma? That you were so—so—what is the word you English are so fond of?—so sober! That's it! And now you speak and laugh like a young girl again!"