Helia kept silence and listened. Which man? She had known one who seemed to her frank and loyal, and gave her his word; and then—then he had forgotten it! What meaning, then, was there in Miss Rowrer’s words? But she understood perfectly, and she blushed for Phil when Ethel, to signify those qualities of uprightness, equity, and honor—that respect for one’s word once given—which she meant by “man,” repeated in a tone of deepest conviction:
PART II
MORE THAN QUEEN
CHAPTER I
WANTED—A DUCHESS!
As he had himself said to Ethel the day of his visit to Phil’s studio, Conrad di Tagliaferro, Duke of Morgania, was much to be pitied—he had to quit Paris!
The duke reveled in the life of the Boulevard, losing himself amid the crowd, climbing to the tops of omnibuses, taking a cab to the opera, getting himself spoken of in the society news of the papers. He was seen everywhere,—in salons and at the theater, at the clubs and at the races. There was no ceremony for him, and he had no cares. Arriving in Paris he put aside all the duties of his position as you might leave a coat in the cloak-room. When he accepted a friend’s invitation he always insisted that there should be no questions of etiquette.
“Sans cérémonie—it’s understood,” and he would add in Parisian slang, “au hazard de la fourchette [pot-luck]!”
However, there was a “but.” His people pestered him from afar in the shape of two voivodes who had been delegated by his nobles, and who followed him even to his late suppers like some twofold Banquo specter. These delegates were in Paris to urge his return. The duke had been lucky enough to avoid them until now; but their mere presence said clearly enough that things were going wrong in Morgania.
Since the fabulous days of Morgana the unity of this little warlike people had always been kept at its frontier, beneath the shadow of its great red banner with the white cross facing barbarism; and it was from that side the storm was muttering once again.