He felt the sting of so unwonted a rebuke. "I daresay you're right, Mater," he acknowledged. "I'll be more careful after this."
"I hope you will, I'm sure. As Crown Prince you mustn't think of any partner under the rank of Baroness. Ask one of the Princesses first, or you'll give more offence."
"Right-oh!" was all he said, and, feeling that it would be awkward to make any explanation or excuses to Daphne, he solved the difficulty by avoiding her for the rest of the evening.
Princess Goldernenfingerleinigen, a prepossessing but not very forthcoming damsel, enjoyed the distinction of being commanded by the Crown Prince as his first partner.
He had had no experience in conversing with Princesses, and she did not exert herself either to put him more at his ease or prevent him from losing himself frequently in the mazes of the dance. Once or twice he was oppressed by a painful suspicion that he had seen her making a little grimace of self-pity at the Countess Gänsehirtin. But elaborately engraved mirrors are not very trustworthy, and he might have been mistaken. Still, he was thankful when the dance, in which he was conscious of having done himself so little credit, came to an end.
"Edna, old girl," he remarked subsequently to the Princess Royal, "I call this a rotten ball. Can't stick dancing with any more of these Princesses!"
Princess Edna, it appeared, had been no more favourably impressed by the Courtiers.
"They've simply no conversation," she complained, "and no ideas about any serious subjects!"
"No, I've noticed that," he said; "and they think they're the only people who can dance! I tell you what—you and I'll show 'em how we do the Tango. That'll make 'em open their eyes!"
It did. As has already been said, both he and Edna, as persons who could not afford to be out of the movement, had taken lessons that winter in the recent importation from dubious Argentine dancing-saloons. They danced it now with conscientious care, Prince Clarence exhibiting as much abandon as a man could who was dancing with his sister.