“What are you people so silent about?” asked Pontycroft, coming up with Lucilla from the lawn. Lucilla sank with an ouf of thankfulness into one of the cushioned chairs. Ponty seated himself on the balustrade, near Bertram, and swung his legs.
“Never play lawn-golf with Lucilla,” he warned his listeners. “She cheats like everything. She even poked a ball into a hole with her toe.”
“A very good way of making it go in,” Lucilla answered. “Besides, if I cheated, it was for two good purposes: first, to hurry up the game, which would otherwise have lasted till I dropped; and then to show you how much more inventive and resourceful women are than men.”
She fanned her soft face gently with her pocket-handkerchief.
Ponty turned to Bertram. “Tell us the latest secret tidings from Altronde. What are the prospects of the rightful party?”
“Oh yes, do tell us of Altronde,” said Lucilla, dropping her handkerchief into her lap, and looking up with eagerness in her soft eyes. “I've never met a Pretender before. Do tell us all about it.”
Bertram laughed. “Alas,” he said, “there's nothing about it. There are no tidings from Altronde, and the rightful party (if there is one) has no prospects. And I am not a Pretender—I am merely the son of a Pretender, and my father maintains his pretensions merely as a matter of form—not to let them, in a legal sense, lapse. He is as well aware as any one that there'll never be a restoration.”
“Oh?” said Lucilla, her eyes darkening with disappointment; then, hope dying hard: “But one constantly sees paragraphs in the papers headed 'Unrest in Altronde,' and they seem to enjoy a change of ministry with each new moon.”
“Yes,” admitted Bertram, “there's plenty of unrest—the people being exorbitant drinkers of coffee; and as every deputy aspires to be a minister in turn, they change their ministry as often as they have a leisure moment. 'Tis a state very much divided against itself. But there's one thing they're in a vast majority agreed upon, and that is that they don't want a return of the Bertrandoni.”
“Were you such dreadful tyrants?” questioned Ruth, artlessly serious.