'Oh!' Lushington did not seem surprised at the royal personage's reported language. 'Then it was the King who passed me in that smart brougham? I thought so.'
'Yes,' answered Madame Bonanni rather brusquely, and she became very busy with some little birds.
'It's funny,' Margaret said to Lushington. 'One always imagines a king with a crown and a sort of ermine dressing-gown, and a sceptre like the Lord Mayor's mace! Of course it's perfectly ridiculous, isn't it?'
'I believe His Majesty possesses those things,' answered Lushington, as if he did not like the subject.
'He looked and talked much more like an old friend than anything else,' Margaret went on, remembering that Madame Bonanni had used the same expression before Schreiermeyer.
To her surprise and sudden discomfiture neither of the two paid the least attention to her remark.
'What train shall you take, mother?' asked Lushington so abruptly upon Margaret's speech that she understood her mistake.
Though she had guessed something, it had somehow not occurred to her to connect the royal personage with Madame Bonanni's past; but now she scarcely dared to glance at Lushington. When she did, he seemed to be avoiding her eyes again, and she saw the old look of pain in his face, though he was talking about the timetables and the turbine channel-boat.
'You must come over to London and see me before your début, my dear,' Madame Bonanni said, breaking off the discussion of trains and turning to Margaret. 'That is, if Schreiermeyer will let you,' she added. 'You will have to do exactly what he tells you, now, and he is always right. He will be a father to you, now that he is going to make money out of you.'
'Will he call me his "darling"?' inquired Margaret, with a shade of anxiety.