"You can't expect Crown Princesses, my dear fellow, to trouble about rules," said I. "They make their own."
"Then I wish they would hunt hounds of their own and leave mine to me," said the long-suffering one tragically. "It turns me dizzy every time I see her among 'em. If Fitz had any sense of decency he would look after her."
"Fitz is the slave of circumstance. Brasset, if you are a wise fellow and you are not above taking the advice of a friend, you will never marry the next in succession to an old-established and despotic monarchy."
"My God—no!" The voice of the noble Master vibrated with profound emotion.
In honour of this resolution we exchanged flasks.
CHAPTER XVII
A GLARE IN THE SKY
The Society for the Maintenance of the Public Decency has a record of long and distinguished usefulness, but never in its annals has it been moved to a more determined activity than during the week which followed this ill-starred run. The Ruling Dames or Past Grand Mistresses—I don't quite know what their true official title is—of this august body met and conferred and drank tea continually. Those who were conversant with the Society's methods made dire prophecy of a public action of an unparalleled rigour. But beyond the fact that Mrs. Arbuthnot's china-blue eyes had an inscrutable glint, and that Mrs. Catesby's Minerva-like front was as lofty and menacing as became the daughter of Jove, nothing happened during this critical period which really aspires to the dignity of history.
Three times within that fateful space the noble Master led forth his hounds; three times was it whispered confidently in my ear by my little friend Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins with a piquant suggestion in her accent of her old Kentucky home, which sometimes overtakes her very charmingly in moments of acute emotion, "that if the tenderfoot from the rotunda hit the trail, Reg would take the fox-dogs home"[[1]]; three times did the lady in the scarlet coat do her best to override the fox-dogs in question; three times, as the veracious historian is fain to confess, nothing happened whatever. It is true that more than once the noble Master looked at the offender "as no gentleman ought to look at a lady." More than once he cursed her by all his gods, but never within her hearing. Rumour had it that he also told Fitz that if he didn't look after his wife he should give the order for the kennels. Unfortunately, Miss Laura Glendinning was the sole authority for this melodramatic statement.