The Queen entered.
She stood in a great hall. Round the walls hung pictures in tarnished frames. Rich furniture, damp-stained and worm-eaten, stood stiffly arranged as if for some great function. Only here and there was evidence of some disorder. A table was upset near the fireplace. The covering of a chair had been torn, and the hair stuffing of its cushions bulged through the rent. The ashes of a wood fire and the charred remains of half-burnt logs were on the hearth. Some papers lay scattered on the floor near one of the windows.
The Queen, subdued, quieter, went on tip-toe round the room. She touched the furniture and the pictures softly, as she passed them. There was in her a feeling, half fear, half reverence, for the things which had once belonged to the dead King Otto. Phillips, moved by an impulse of curiosity, crossed the room to where the torn papers lay. He stooped down and picked up some of the fragments. For the most part they were blank. On one or two there were words in a language he did not understand. Only one fragment interested him. It was the corner of a torn envelope. It bore an English stamp and a London postmark.
“Your Majesty,” he said.
She did not hear or did not reply. Mr. Phillips was not used to intimate association with royal persons. He tried another form of address. “Your Serene Highness,” he said.
The Queen looked round.
“Do you mean me?” she said.
“Yes, your Excellency,” said Phillips.
The Queen laughed aloud. The sound of his voice and her own, the ready merriment of her laughter, awoke her from the fear and reverence, scattered the vague feeling of mystery which hung over her.
“Don’t you do it,” she said. “I’m queen of this island right enough, but I don’t mean to spend the rest of my life walking on stilts. I’m not that kind of queen. I’m a genuine democrat all the time. Don’t you forget that. Now call me Miss Daisy, same as you used to on board.”