“Wilson.”
“Ah, how fortunate! It is you of all men I wished most to see. If–––” A shout from a thousand throats rent the air. She looked dazed.
“If your Highness would bow,” suggested Otaballo.
She turned to the gathering, smiled, and bowed. But her scant courtesy was scarcely finished before her eyes were again upon Wilson and the anxious look uppermost in them.
“I must see you,” she commanded. “Follow me into the palace.”
She raised the hem of her light dress and tripped up the stairs looking more like a schoolgirl than a queen. Wilson and Stubbs followed after Otaballo, who appeared somewhat worried. They entered the palace, and at her request a guard led them into the privacy of a small room––as it happened, the room which Wilson had twice before visited that day.
“I asked you to come,” she began a bit nervously, “because you seemed to be the friend of whom Dicky talked to the last–––”
“The last!” exclaimed Wilson.
“Oh, not that,” she assured him, grasping his fear. “He isn’t––isn’t dead. But you knew he was wounded?”
“No,” he answered quickly, “I had not heard.”