Ewen was not vanquished. “Your Royal Highness is too good,” he answered, bowing, “but I should not dream of claiming that right any longer, and I will withdraw.”
“I always heard that you Highlanders were unforgiving,” lamented the Prince, between jest and earnest. (Devoted though they were, they were certainly not easy to manage.) “Come, Ardroy, you are much of an age with myself, I imagine—do you never say in heat what you designed not—and regret the moment after?”
Their eyes met, the warm Southern brown and the blue.
“Yes, my Prince,” said Ewen suddenly. “Give me what orders you will, and they shall be obeyed.”
“I am forgiven then?” asked the Prince quickly, and he held out his hand as though to clasp his aide-de-camp’s. But Ewen bent his knee and put his lips to it.
During this touching scene of reconciliation it was evident from various discreet but not too patient taps upon the door that the excluded person on the other side still desired admittance.
“Open the door, mon ami,” said Charles Edward, and Ewen, unlocking it, did so; and in walked Colonel John William O’Sullivan, not too pleased, as was obvious, at his exclusion. He carried a cloak over his arm.
“I thought your Royal Highness was admitting no one except——” He stopped and looked in dumb annoyance at the intruder. Ewen showed a stony front. There was no love lost between the Quartermaster-General and the Camerons whom he had posted so badly at Tranent before the recent battle.
“Strickland has not come yet,” observed the Prince, and added, with a spice of malice, “I think it well to take an aide-de-camp with me, O’Sullivan. We shall therefore be a partie carrée.”
“As your Highness pleases, of course,” said O’Sullivan stiffly.