There came a pause. “One person only seems to have any belief in me. The younger Miss Solbé—— Did you say anything, dear?”
“No. Go on.”
“I have asked her if she too has had any dreams, any vague memories of a previous existence. She seems to have had something confirmatory in a shadowy sort of way. Very vague intimations. She tells them timidly, when her sister is not about. But she is under a misapprehension that her relationship to me was a particularly close and special one. She was not my Queen. There she is wrong. It is perhaps natural for her to think so, but I remember quite distinctly how it was. She was one of the Twenty Principal Concubines who carried the Eagle fans.”
“Have you told her that?”
“Not yet,” said Mr. Preemby. “Not yet. One has to go discreetly in all these things.”
Another pause followed. Christina Alberta looked at her wrist-watch. “My word!” she cried. “We shall be late for lunch!”
She noted as they walked back towards the Petunia Boarding House that his bearing and manner had undergone a subtle change. He seemed larger and taller and his face was serener and he held his head higher. He did not h’rrmp once. He seemed to expect people and things to get out of his way, and it was as if the path was a carpet that was being unrolled before his advance. Had she been able to see herself she would have remarked an equal change in her own carriage. The dance had gone out of her paces. She walked like one upon whose shoulders the responsibilities of life might easily become overwhelming.
They were late for lunch and all the other boarders were in their places, beginning. Every one turned to look at Mr. Preemby’s face as they came in, and then they glanced at one another. “So you’ve come back to us,” said Mrs. Hockleby to Christina Alberta, meeting her eye.
“It’s jolly to be back,” said Christina Alberta.