And when her father passed out with a bow Sylvia was indeed a king. The audience did not last long. There were practical matters to discuss, for which his Majesty was begged to excuse their withdrawal. Sylvia would have liked a longer ceremony. When the visitor had gone they all sat down to a big tea in the presence-room, and she was told that the young man had been so completely conquered by her gracious reception of him that he had promised to raise five hundred pounds for her cause. His reward in addition to royal favors was to be a high class of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. Everybody, even Henry, was in high good humor. The prince did not come to Streatham again; but a week later Monkley got a letter from him with the Paris postmark.
DEAR MR. MONKLEY,—Our young friend handed me a check for £200 the day before yesterday. As he seemed uncertain about the remainder of the sum promised, I took the liberty of drawing my share at once. My great work requires immediate assistance, and I am now busily occupied in Paris. My next address will be a castle in Spain, where perhaps we shall meet when you are looking for your next site.
Most truly yours,
JOSEPHE-ERNESTE,
PRINCE DE CONDÉ.
Jimmy and Henry stared at each other.
“I knew it,” said Henry. “I’m always wrong; but I knew it. Still, if I could catch him, it would take more than Condy’s Fluid to disinfect that pea-green welsher after I’d done with him.”
Monkley sat biting his lips in silence; and Sylvia, recognizing the expression in his eyes that she dreaded formerly, notwithstanding that he was now her best friend, felt sharply her old repugnance for him. Henry was still abusing the defaulter when Monkley cut him short.
“Shut up. I rather admire him.”
“Admire him?” Henry gasped. “I suppose you’d admire the hangman and shake hands with him on the scaffold. It’s all very fine for you. You didn’t have to learn how Ferdinand the Fifty-eighth married Isabella the Innocent, daughter of Alphonso the Eighth, commonly called Alphonso the Anxious. Condy’s Fluid! I swallowed enough of it, I can tell you.”
Monkley told him gruffly to keep quiet; then he sat down and began to write, still with that expression in his eyes. Presently he tore up the letter and paced the room.