The Princess shrugged her shoulders.
“There is no disgrace; it is common courtesy, if you wish to invite a guest who is staying with others, to do it through his hostess.”
“I will not,” she said briefly. “It makes my blood boil even to see him with her.”
“Rusidda!” he cried protestingly.
“Oh, have you no eyes?” she asked, in a voice that was strangely, and it seemed to me unnecessarily, touched with emotion.
“Oh yes, of course I have,” he continued impatiently. And neither saw that their words were double-edged.
And I, as I rumbled back in the heavy old coach past the bridge of the Admiral George, thought myself mighty clever, for I did not believe there was one word about the Admiral in the letter; and the time sped even behind those horses, as I thought how Will’s stern face would light up when he read what I took to be the real news in that letter.
Chapter XXII.—How all Europe was at Sixes and Sevens.
IT seems to me, who spent so important a part of my life in those waters, that it would be difficult to find a greater contrast under the same skies than that presented by King Ferdinand’s two kingdoms and two capitals. Naples, as the Admiral said, is a city of fiddlers and light-o’-loves, utterly irresponsible; willing to begin a war with a nation like France, without counting the cost; marching to battle with the intention of turning her back the moment the enemy stopped retreating and faced her; willing to squander money that was needed for the very existence of the kingdom on pasteboard decorations and mythological fêtes; willing to accept any strong master, as Delilah accepted Samson, and from the very first thinking how she might betray him.