"Fitz is a very shrewd fellow, and he knows our guest rather better than either of us. You must not forget that kings are kings in Illyria."
"I don't understand."
"You must promise, even if you don't."
"I shall do nothing of the kind. It is a humiliating suggestion. Besides, it is all so bourgeois."
"I was waiting for that. But, whatever it is, I have quite made up my mind. Either you promise, or I don't sleep over the stables."
"Then I refuse; absolutely and unconditionally I refuse," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, with what can only be described as hauteur.
It was our first impasse in the course of six years of double harness. I have never disguised from myself that I am a weak mortal. Mrs. Arbuthnot has never disguised it from me either. The habit of yielding more or less gracefully to the imperious will of the superior half of my entity had become second nature. But there was a voice within that would not have me give way.
"Absolutely and unconditionally! I consider it odious. And why should you insult me in this manner——"
The star of my destiny was rising to the heights of the tragedy queen.
"If you would only make the effort to understand, my child," I said patiently, "what is implied in your own admission that there is something in being a king, after all!"