He coloured, but had to join his laugh with hers. “I see that the shared carriage is not the only family secret you are guarding,” he said. “How many people have you kept this one from?”
“I could answer with one word, but will not.”
“The word ‘all’ or the word ‘none’?”
“Think of being so rich that you can ignore money!” was her irrelevant response. “I could tell you what happened to Donna Hera of the Barbiondi not long ago—before her marriage—when she ordered some things at a certain shop, but I will not. It’s a family secret. Now she’s lavishing money on the unfashionable poor.”
“I wish we might go,” he said restively. “I’m hungry. I want my dinner.” He screwed his fists into his eyes and whined like a schoolboy.
“What a savage that fellow Tarsis is, though!”
“Of course. We are all savages under the skin. Come and have some champagne on an empty stomach.”
“Thank you. I’m not savage enough for that.”
In the banquet hall servants stood with folded arms about the waiting board. Long ago they had laid the napery and set the crystal and silver for six persons—the King, the Queen, Don Riccardo, Donna Hera, Donna Beatrice, and Signor Tarsis. By this hour the reception should have been over, the guests’ carriages rolling from the court, and the dinner reaching the period of poisson.
In the kitchen a great composer beat his temples and walked the floor frantically. Had not the symphony been commanded for half-past seven? And at half-past seven the prelude was ready, with all the delicious harmonies that were to follow cooking to such tempo that perfection would attend their serving. And the wines! The golden Chablis, the garnet Margaux, and the sparkling ruby of Asti, the last by his Majesty so beloved—all in the ice, their cooling timed to a minute. Every second that passed made his symphony less fit for the palate of gods and dimmed the lustre of his noble art. Even at this moment the dinner was a wreck. Magnificent devil! What right had a king to ruin a masterpiece!