"You thought I expected to gain something by it, is not that so? Well, there are a great many people who think so still—your father among them. They'll never understand. I don't blame them, for, I declare to you, I don't fully appreciate it myself. John Tullis playing nurse and story-teller to a seven-year-old boy, to the exclusion of everything else, is more than I can grasp. Somehow, I've come to feel that he's mine. That must be the reason. But you've heard me prate on this subject a hundred times. Don't let me start it again. There's something else you want to talk to me about, so please don't encourage me to tell all the wonderful things he has said and done to-day."
"It is of the Prince that I want to speak, Mr. Tullis," she said, suddenly serious. "I don't care to hear whether he stubbed his toe to-day or just how much he has grown since yesterday, but I do want to talk very seriously with you concerning his future—I might say his immediate future."
He looked at her narrowly.
"Are you quite serious?"
"Quite. I could not have asked you to come to this house for anything trivial. We have become very good friends, you and I. Too good, perhaps, for I've no doubt there are old tabbies in Edelweiss who are provoked to criticism—you know what I mean. Their world is full of imaginary affairs, else what would there be left for old age? But we are good friends and we understand why we are good friends, so there's the end to that. As I say, I could not have asked so true a friend into the house of his enemy for the mere sake of having my vanity pleased by his obedience."
"I am quite sure of that," he said. "Are you in trouble, Countess? Is there anything I can do?"
"It has to do with the Prince, not with me," she said. "And yet I am in trouble—or perhaps I should say, I am troubled."
"The Prince is a sturdy little beggar," he began, but she lifted her hand in protest.
"And he has sturdy, loyal friends. That is agreed. And yet—" she paused, a perplexed line coming between her expressive eyes.
John Tullis opened his own eyes very wide. "You don't mean to say that he is—he is in peril of any sort?"