It is not easy to shock Gorman. Indeed, I should have said beforehand that it was impossible to shock him. But I have his assurance that Konrad Karl did it. It is true that Gorman himself had suggested marriage to the King as a way out of his difficulties. But marriage with an unnamed and unknown heiress is one thing. The King’s plan, frankly worked out, for insulting and robbing a girl whom Gorman knew personally was quite a different matter. Miss Daisy Donovan is a bright-faced, clear-eyed, romantic-souled girl. She had finished her course of study in one of the universities of the Middle-west without becoming a cultivated prig. In spite of the fact that history, economics, emasculated philosophy and a kind of intellectual complexion cream called literature had been smeared all over her by earnest professors, she had never learned to take herself, life or society at all seriously. She had all the vitality which gives American women their singular charm and none of the appalling earnestness of high endeavour which sometimes leads even very charming women into repulsive kinds of foolishness. The thought of a marriage between Miss Daisy and King Konrad Karl—with Madame Ypsilante in the near background—affected Gorman with a feeling of physical nausea.
The King possessed a certain capacity for sympathy. He guessed something of what was in Gorman’s mind.
“After all,” he said, “she would be a queen. It is something. You have said so yourself, my friend. You cannot have an omelette without the sacrifice of an egg. But I see—I see very plainly that you do not wish me to marry the Donovan oof-girl. You will not back me up. Good. I back down. I bear no malice. I wish you success. I shall eat cake at your wedding without envy. To you the American with pigs’ eyes—yes, I am sure she has pigs’ eyes. To me Corinne. To which of us happiness? eh, my friend?”
Gorman felt that it would be perfectly impossible to convince the King that he had no wish to marry Miss Daisy or her fortune.
“All right,” he said. “Leave it at that if you like.”
“I have left it,” said the King, “at that, precisely at that, though I do not like it at all.”
“And now,” said Gorman, “let’s get back to your own affairs. You say that you’re in a tightish place just for the moment.”
“I am in a hell hole,” said the King.
“Why not go back to the Emperor? He must do something for you. After all, he’s your uncle. He can’t let you go under altogether. Of course you’ll have to eat humble pie, do the repentant prodigal and all that sort of thing.”