“Thank you. And you will say good-bye to Lady Dor for us and—and to Miss Adgate,” Bertram responded. But there was a catch in his voice, and he grew perceptibly paler. “I—I,” he stumbled, hesitated, “I will write to you as soon as I know where I am.”
Ponty went home thoughtful; thoughtful, but conscious of an elusive inward satisfaction. This rather puzzled him. “It's the sort of thing one feels when one has succeeded in evading an unpleasant duty—a sentiment of snugness, safety, safety and relief. But what unpleasant duty have I succeeded in evading?” he asked himself. Yet there it was—the comfortable sense of a duty shirked.
“I'm in doubt whether to hail you as the Queen Elect of Yvetot, or to offer you my condolences upon the queering of your pitch,” he said to Ruth. “He loved and rode away. He certainly loved, and he's as certainly riding away—at twelve o'clock to-day, by a special train. I supposed he would charge me with a message for you—but no—none except a commonplace good-bye. No promise, nothing compromising, nothing that could be used as evidence against him. However, he said he'd write—as soon as he knew whether he was standing on his head or on his heels. One thing, though, you might do—there's still time. You might go to the railway station and cover his flight with mute reproaches. Perhaps the sight of your distraught young face would touch his conscience. You might get the necessary word from him before the train started.”
“Be quiet, Harry,” said Lucilla. “You shan't chaff her any longer. Prince Bertrandoni is a man of honour—and he's as good as pledged to her already. This is a merely momentary interruption. As soon as he's adjusted his affairs to the new conditions, he'll come back.”
“Ay, we know these comings back,” answered Ponty, ominously. “But a wise fisherman lands his fish while it's on the hook, and doesn't give it a chance of swimming away and coming back. I see a pale face at the window, watching, waiting; and I hear a sad voice murmuring, 'He cometh not.'”
“You're intolerable,” Lucilla cried out, with an impatient gesture. “Ruth, don't pay him the least attention.”
“Oh, don't mind me,” said Ruth. “I'm vastly amused. Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”
“There's just one element of hope,” Ponty ended, “and that is that even to demi-semi Royalty a matter of thirty thousand a year must be a consideration.”
A column from Altronde in the Fieramosca of the morrow gave a glowing description of Bertram's and his mother's arrival, which Pontycroft translated at the breakfast table: how the Grand Duke, in the uniform of a general, met and tenderly embraced them as they stepped from the train, and drove with them in a “lando di gala” through streets brilliant with flags and thronged by cheering subjects, to the Palace, escorted by the selfsame regiment of guards whose officers the other day had so summarily cooked the goose of Massimiliano. “That is pretty and touching,” was Ponty's comment, “but listen to this—this is rich. The Grand Duke introduced them to his people, in a proclamation, as 'my most dear and ever dutiful son, and my beloved consort, the companion and consoler of my long exile!' What so false as truth is? Well, there's nothing either true or false but thinking makes it so. And the mayor and corporation, in a loyal address, welcomed Bertram as the 'heir to the virtues as well as to the throne of his august progenitor.' His august progenitor's virtues were jewels which, during his career in Paris, at any rate, he modestly concealed. However! Oh, but here—here's something that really is interesting. 'The festivities of the evening were terminated by a banquet, at which the Grand Duke graciously made a speech.' Listen to one of the things he said: 'It has been represented to me as the earnest aspiration of my people that my solemn coronation should be celebrated at the earliest possible date. But unhappily, the crown of my fathers has been sullied by contact with the brows of a usurping dynasty. That crown I will never wear. A new, a virgin crown must be placed upon the head of your restored legitimate sovereign. And I herewith commission my dear son, whom Heaven has endowed, among many noble gifts, with the eye and the hand of an artist, to design a crown which shall be worthy of his sire, himself, and his posterity.' Well, that will keep Bertram out of mischief. I see him from here—see and hear him—bending over his drawing-board, with busy pencil, and whistling 'The girl I left behind me.'”
And then a servant entered bearing a telegram.