The riding question was soon settled, for the Grand Duke put his toes out and his heels in, and sawed the autumn air with a sharp elbow. And Sophia shook her head to Blanche as they came in.
‘There is but one more chance,’ she said.
She and her cousin played rubicon bezique that night, and at first Sophia thought that after all he might do. He played quickly, and marked treble bezique in the first game, which raised him in her estimation. But, oh Heaven! the humiliation which followed! He showed a miser’s greed for his tale of tens and aces; he haggled over mere francs, refusing to toss double or quits in napoleons; he preferred to make certain of a small score rather than risk a large one; he let out incidentally that he could not swim (‘Without any sense of shame, my dear Blanche, without any sense of shame,’ said the Princess next day); and finally, after four games, he said he was sure she was tired of bezique (meaning that he was), kissed her hand, offered her his own, coupled with his heart.
His visit was curtailed, and he left two days afterwards. Prince Demetrius gloomily threatened his daughter with the prospect of being an old maid all her life, but she only put her pretty nose in the air, and said ‘Hoots!’—a word she had picked up from Blanche, and thought very expressive of certain shades of feeling.
CHAPTER II.
A FOOL COMES TO RHODOPÉ.
Till the time she was twenty-one Princess Sophia lived quietly enough at Amandos, paying visits occasionally abroad, but passing a full ten months of the year in Rhodopé. Though she was often bored, she was usually employed, for Prince Demetrius’ health had now for a year or two been failing, and many of the lesser cares of state devolved on his daughter. It must be confessed that during her father’s lifetime she discharged these duties admirably, and has not always had the credit for this, for the complete neglect of all her duties when she herself was on the throne has effaced the memory of these earlier years. She presided over the National Assembly—except on the comparatively few occasions when her father was present—with a wonderful great dignity and grace, and while listening to their debates and considering their resolutions with all the care that they deserved, she never let the autocratic power wielded by the Crown seem to pass from her control or grow effete. More than once she used her power of veto, more than once she insisted on a measure thrown out only by a narrow number of votes being put into effect. But never—and in this she showed the true and right understanding of autocratic government—did she reverse the decision of a substantial majority.
But what the poor girl went through, what agonies of boredom, what screaming tortures of ennui, what clenching of jaws which ached for a yawn, what twitching of limbs which longed for the saddle, that august body never guessed. The language of Rhodopé contains no such expression as ‘local jurisdiction’ or ‘county council,’ and all questions which can be thought to bear in the minutest way upon the interests of the country are solemnly brought before the House.
‘My dear Blanche,’ she cried in despair, after a five hours’ sitting one afternoon, ‘unless I die of it, I shall go stark mad. I have had to-day to give a casting-vote as to whether the second book of Euclid shall be included in the third standard of schools. What do I know of third standards? And, indeed, I know as little of Euclid. On the top of that it appeared that Yanni Tsimovak wished to grow vines on his twopenny estate instead of tobacco. To this, too, I had to give my serious consideration. It would be a bad precedent, said one, and would seem to point to the fact that the cultivation of tobacco was going out. This would be deplorable, for it yields higher profits than the growth of vines. “Then why does Yanni Tsimovak prefer vines?”—I asked them that, they did not know. Nor did I know, nor do I care. And who under the sun is Yanni Tsimovak—he sounds like a patent medicine—and what is his tobacco to me? Yes, tea, please, and three lumps of sugar.’
‘Not three, Sophy,’ objected the other. ‘You are getting stout, or you soon will.’
‘Blanche, another word, and I eat the whole contents of the sugar-basin, lump by lump. And Prince Petros comes this evening!’