"Your Majesty must forgive us," said I, without permitting my glance to stray towards the half-terrified vision that was so near to me, "if we appear bourgeois. The fact is, we are not so familiar as we should like to be with the usages of the great world."
The King laughed heartily.
"There is nothing to forgive, my good friend," he said with an air of splendid magnanimity. "But Madame should certainly have locked her door. However, let us not bear malice."
With a superbly graceful gesture, in which the paternal and the humorous were delightfully mingled, the King withdrew.
Horror and incredulity contended in the eyes of Mrs. Arbuthnot. But I did not think well to spare her the reverberation of my triumph.
"There is something in being a king, after all, mon enfant."
Mrs. Arbuthnot was only able to gasp.
"Do not let us blame him; he is the Father of his People. But apparently it would seem that that which may be bourgeois in the eyes of the matrons of the Crackanthorpe Hunt is really the highest breeding in Illyria."
Thereupon I laid down the poker as pensively as I had taken it up, sought to compose the star of my destiny, who was beginning to weep softly, and bade her good morning.
Outside the door I lingered a moment to hear the key click in the lock in the most unmistakable manner.