‘It is strictly prohibited,’ he said; ‘every boy at Eton will tell you so. Do not blame the masters. Will you lend me some money, mother?’
Though the Princess would have preferred that he should not play at all, she had the consolation of that he played well. His face was a mask of good breeding, not an eyelash betrayed emotion, and he looked gravely amused whether he won or lost.
‘He is a born gambler. It is in the blood, you know,’ she said under her breath to her cousin, the Duchess of Winchester, who was sitting next to her, and the Duchess thought she detected pride and not regret alone in her voice.
Mother and son, as arranged, went out the next days to see the sights of London. To the Princess it seemed to have grown sadder and foggier since she had seen it last. Their expeditions were mostly made on foot, for the Princess loved the bustle and stir of the streets, and more than once they made the top of an omnibus their observatory.
‘There are plenty of people, certainly,’ she said one day to Leonard, as they swayed and rolled up Baker Street; ‘and I love crowds. But observe their infinite sadness of demeanour. What a load of responsibility seems to rest on the least and meanest shoulders! Look at that baker there! If he was in Rhodopé I would make him Court undertaker. To what genuine melancholy is he the prey! If I was responsible for the whole creation, I should not be so sad. And they all walk so fast, as if they were going to catch the dying words of a near and dear relative, and would only just get there in time. After all, I am glad I am a Southerner. We may not be so good, but we are certainly gayer. And it is certainly good to be gay.’
They stopped at the corner where Madame Tussaud’s red exhibition stood, and Leonard, who for some minutes had been with difficulty restraining his laughter, suddenly burst out into a great shout of amusement.
‘England, at any rate, has not made you sad at present,’ said the Princess. ‘What is the matter, Leonard?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said the lad; ‘at least, you will soon know.’
She paid their entrance-money—Leonard tossed his mother who should pay for both, and won—and began the tour of the room. Suddenly the Princess gave a little exclamation of horrified surprise, and rapidly turned up No. 27 in the catalogue. What met her indignant eye was this:
‘The gambling Princess Sophia.—Princess Sophia of Rhodopé, though only just forty, is surely the most rankly notorious crowned head of Europe. She spends the greater part of every day in the club she has started at the capital, Amandos, and the era of gambling she has introduced is rapidly undermining the physique and morale of her little kingdom. She has confined her old Prime Minister, Malakopf, a financier of European reputation, to a life-long imprisonment for some imaginary plot against the throne; and her husband, Prince Petros of Herzegovina, she has divorced and banished from the principality of Rhodopé. He is described by those who knew him as a man of charming manner and quick insight. The Princess has a violent temper and is growing very stout. Her only son, Prince Leonard, is at school at Eton.’