"It is strange you should have forgotten his name," he said wearily.
"Oh, I do so many ridiculous things!" complained Beverly, remembering who she was supposed to be. "I have never seen him, you know," she added.
"It is not strange, your highness. He was educated in England and had seen but little of his own country when he was called to the throne two years ago. You remember, of course, that his mother was an Englishwoman—Lady Ida Falconer."
"I—I think I have heard some of his history—a very little, to be sure," she explained lamely.
"Prince Gabriel, his half brother, is the son of Prince Louis the Third by his first wife, who was a Polish countess. After her death, when Gabriel was two years old, the prince married Lady Ida. Dantan is their son. He has a sister—Candace, who is but nineteen years of age."
"I am ashamed to confess that you know so much more about my neighbors than I," she said.
"I lived in Dawsbergen for a little while, and was ever interested in the doings of royalty. That is a poor man's privilege, you know."
"Prince Gabriel must be a terrible man," cried Beverly, her heart swelling with tender thoughts of the exiled Dantan and his little sister.
"You have cause to know," said he shortly, and she was perplexed until she recalled the stories of Gabriel's misdemeanors at the court of Edelweiss.
"Is Prince Dantan as handsome as they say he is?" she asked.