‘He won a fortune at Homburg last year,’ remarked Blanche.
‘Fortunate man! Why can’t I go to Homburg, and win a fortune, instead of including the second book of Euclid in the third standard? Why should he play roulette, and I wrestle with the Assembly over the affairs of a patent medicine? I hate medicine.’
‘“Uneasy lies the head——”’ began Blanche.
‘But I don’t wear a crown,’ cried Sophia, upsetting her tea; ‘and if you bore me with any more of your odious quotations from your absurd Shakespeare, I shall scream.’
She rang the bell for another cup, as her own was broken. ‘And to-morrow, what a programme!’ she sighed. ‘There is a review in the morning. Well, I don’t mind that; but afterwards I have to open the new town-hall, and go to the mayor’s lunch afterwards, which will last hours, when I be on the hills. An inconceivable man, Blanche—like a wet toad; and his wife beggars the imagination. She will wear a velvet dress like a sofa-cover, and a string of coral, rather short of beads, on black elastic round her neck. Her face will grow red and shiny during lunch, she will eat till a proper person would burst, and she will confide in me afterwards that she, too, is a descendant of princes. She may be a descendant of the four major prophets for all I care! And then—oh, I know so well—I shall feel it laid upon me to tell her that Methuselah is my lineal grandfather, and she will say, “Indeed, your Royal Highness!” and not see that I am making fun of her. She won’t see it—she will never see anything as long as she lives; and I shall want to shake her till her coral necklace bursts and runs all over the floor. Give me a bun with sugar on the top.’
Now, Prince Petros, who was the second son of the reigning Duke of Herzegovina, and was expected at Amandos that night, was a young man altogether unlike the most of those who had tried and failed to touch the Princess’s heart or win her hand. He came of a strangely mixed race, which it would be kind to call cosmopolitan, and cruel to call mongrel, one grandmother being a Jewess, another a Greek, while his mother was English and of obscure origin. But Princess Sophia, as she had told Mr. Buckhurst when she tried to induce him to elope with her, had enough pedigree for two. Furthermore, he had ridden his own horse to the winning-post in the Austrian Derby, and won a fortune at Homburg, and was universally allowed to be excellent company. Indeed, the Princess on the hill of glass could hear the thunderings of the horse-hoofs growing nearer. The world also knew of him as a very ambitious man, and the world’s opinion, as so often happens, was entirely true. He was quite prepared to fall in love with the Princess Sophia, and he was equally determined to marry her. The husband of the reigning Princess of Rhodopé, so he thought, had the right to be considered a very enviable man, and provided he was moderately clever, and as ambitious as himself, should bid fair to hold the theatre of the world intent on a piece which it was in his power to produce. The piece should be heroic and magnificent, and should have all the characters but one left out, but that one was to play the title-rôle. The name he had not certainly decided on, but ‘The Emperor of the East’ gave an idea of its scope. From this it will be seen that Prince Petros, with all his horsemanship, and ambition and luck at the cards, had also all the makings of an exceedingly foolish man.
Dinner that night passed off pleasantly enough. Prince Petros sat next Sophia; the English Minister, Lady Blanche, and Madame Amygdale, a celebrated French singer of the variety stage, who steered between propriety and riskiness with a skill worthy the helmsman of a racing yacht, were the only other guests besides the ladies and gentlemen in waiting. The Amygdale devoted herself to the entertainment of Prince Demetrius with such success that he laughed seven times during dinner, and did not swear once. Prince Petros was an essentially conceited man; but as his conceit took the subtle form of self-depreciation, it passed unchallenged for the time. He told them that the man who had ridden second to him at Vienna was a far better horseman than himself, and that he was only a beginner at bezique, but was most anxious to learn more of the game under the tutelage of Princess Sophia.
For a beginner, so it appeared after dinner, he was certainly a very notable performer. At any period of the game he could have told you without hesitation or error not only how many kings, aces, queens, and knaves were still left in, but how many small trumps, an important factor at the close of the game, as beginners are apt to discover. He tossed for napoleons, and lost every time; he acquiesced in and welcomed any raising of the stakes, saying that he was about to propose it himself. Before the first game was over, Princess Sophia knew she had met her match—at the cards, at least.
‘You are far better than I,’ she said, with her habitual frankness. ‘With ordinary luck, I could scarcely give you a decently fought game. Cut, please.’
‘I am a beginner merely,’ murmured the Prince, thereby betraying his foolishness, for he had said that often enough for mere modesty.