“You can perfectly trust me,” she said. “And I can’t tell your Excellency what a cult I have for that great and glorious man. There is no one in the world, I am sure, like him. He is what I mean by a king. I am half-Prussian, as you know, and when I think of the Emperor, I really am afraid that I forget I am English too.”
The Ambassador raised his glass from the table, held it up for a moment, and then drank, admirably conveying, as he meant to, that he was drinking a toast.
Aline Gurtner followed suit with her glass.
“Surely no other king who ever reigned,” continued he, “has such an inspired sense of his duties and responsibilities. His object in coming to England is to disperse the cruel misunderstandings that the English have somehow conceived about him. So many people, even in high places, think of him as a potential enemy, rather than the best friend that England possesses. And his desire to know the English, and all the problems and difficulties of their national life, is hardly second to his desire that Germany—calm, peaceful Germany—should be known by them. In his letter he referred with the utmost concern to the troubles in Ireland. What am I to tell him about that? You who know everybody, and what everybody is saying, must tell me what to say to him. I called at the Foreign Office this afternoon, but I was met with a good deal of reserve. Privately, what do you think? Do the Government take a very serious view of the recalcitrant province?”
Now it would have required a much stronger head than Aline Gurtner’s not to be a little intoxicated with being asked by the representative of a great foreign Power what her opinion was on a burning political question of the day. She did not know much about Ireland, but instantly she began to see herself in the character here deftly indicated, namely, the confidante of Ministers. It was a very pleasant picture, and she instantly posed for it. It was as if a photographer asked her to turn her head a shade to the right.
“I am sure that they are terribly anxious about it,” she said. “They think civil war is more than a possibility.”
“Indeed! Alas and indeed! The Emperor will be broken-hearted to hear that,” said he, not looking at her. “That will be bitter news to him. God avert it! And then there are labour troubles threatening, so Sir Hermann told me. It will be a sad letter I shall have to send to the All-Highest. You have met him, of course?”
The bitter pill of confession was sweetened by the jam of anticipation.
“No, never,” she said.
He looked at her in obvious surprise: the surprise was, perhaps, a shade too obvious.