“You will do it,” she said, “for the sake of Konrad Karl. Oh, Sir Gorman, M.P., you would do it at once if you understood. Poor Konrad! He is having so much delight with me in Paris. This time only in our lives it has come to us to have enough money and to be in Paris. It is cruel—so cruel that the Emperor should say: ‘No. Give back the money. Go from Paris. Be starved. Have no pearls, no joy.’ But you will save us. Say you will save us.”
Gorman’s position was an exceedingly difficult one. Madame Ypsilante had firm hold on his hand. She was kissing it at the moment. He was not at all sure that she would not bite it if he refused her request.
“I’ll think the whole thing over,” he said. “I don’t expect I can do anything, but I’ll look into the matter and let you know.”
Madame mouthed his hand in a frenzy of gratitude. She wept copiously. Gorman could feel drops which he supposed to be tears trickling down the inside of his sleeve. The King seized his other hand and shook it heartily.
“It is now as good as done,” he said. “Let us drink to success. I ring the bell. I order champagne, one bottle, two bottles, three, many bottles in the honour of my friend Sir Gorman who has said: ‘Damn it, I will.’”
Under the influence of the second bottle of champagne the King escaped from his heroic mood. Gorman began to realize that a certain cunning lay behind the preposterous proposal he had listened to.
“I shall inform the Emperor,” said the King, “that you go to Salissa to arrange according to his wish. I shall say: ‘M.P. Count Sir Gorman goes. He is a statesman, a financier, a diplomat, a man of uncommon sense.’ The Emperor will then be satisfied.”
“He’ll probably be very dissatisfied when I come back,” said Gorman.
“That will be—let me consider—perhaps eight weeks. In eight weeks many things may happen. And if not, still Corinne and I will have had eight weeks in Paris with oof which we can burn. It is something.”