“I’m afraid, Mr. Skinner, that I must tear myself away,” put in David, anxiously consulting his watch. “The Prince never forgives a fellow being late. He has to live so much on a time-table himself, you know, forever catching trains, and changing his uniforms, and turning up at the exact minute all over the place, laying corner-stones, and opening docks and unveiling statues, and so on, that it makes him intolerant of other people’s lapses. And he’s got a fearful memory for that sort of thing.”
“I assume that you speak of the Heir Apparent,” commented the other. “Am I to understand that you live in a state of personal subjection—that a nobleman in your position, for example, contemplates with apprehension the contingency of causing even the most trivial and transitory displeasure to the personage alluded to?”
“Apprehension, my dear sir? Positive horror! Ah, you little know the reality! Thoughtless people see us from the outside, and they lightly imagine that our lives are one ceaseless round of luxurious gaiety and gilded pleasure. They fancy that to have titles, to bear hereditary distinctions, to fill high places at Court, must be the sum of human happiness. Of course, I suppose we do have a better time than the average, but we pay a price for it. We smile, it is true, but there is always a shudder beneath the smile. A mere breath, a suspicion, the veriest paltry whim of royal disfavour, and we might better never have been born! And so,” he finished with an uneasy graciousness, “you will understand my abrupt leavetaking now.”
“I promise myself on another occasion, sir,” said Mr. Skinner, with more warmth, “the privilege of discussing these topics with you at length. I do not deny that I am myself, to-day, somewhat preoccupied, and lacking in the power of intellectual concentration. Another occasion, I trust, will find me better fitted to bestow upon these subjects the alertness of comprehension and clarity of judgment which their importance demands. At the moment, I confess my mind is burdened with another matter.”
“O, papa—you haven’t gone and lost your letter of credit!” The girl intervened with accents of alarm.
The old gentleman shook his head, and smiled in a dubious fashion. “No,” he replied, hesitatingly, “it is merely that I—I have been enjoined to secrecy about a very curious and interesting revelation which has been made to me, and concealment is profoundly alien to my nature. The necessity for maintaining a mysterious reserve weighs upon me, sir, with unaccustomed oppression.”
“It is something that you have learned this morning?” demanded the daughter. “I’ll make you tell me as soon as we’re alone.”
“Ah, that cannot be,” the father answered. “My faith has been honourably pledged, and must be scrupulously observed.”
“But surely it couldn’t have been stipulated that I was not to know,” she urged. “That would be absurd. And besides, who knows of even my existence over here?”
“Incomprehensible as it may appear to your perceptions,” responded Mr. Skinner, “it happens that you were particularly alluded to in the terms of the confidential compact imposed upon me.”