"It seems to me there are a few facts which I, too, might, possibly, be permitted to know," he said.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
"It was to tell Your Majesty those very facts that I sought an audience, this evening," I said.
Just then a clock began to chime slowly the hour. The king waited until the last stroke—the seventh—had sounded, then, he nodded.
"I am listening, Marshal," he said briskly.
It might be that, after one has asked twelve or thirteen fathers for a daughter, in marriage, he has got sufficiently hardened to confront the fourteenth with, at least, a show of indifference; but, as this was my first father, I admit I was a trifle uneasy along the spine; and, somehow, my voice seemed to get lost in my throat, and the words were very reluctant in coming. I suppose Frederick saw my embarrassment for he smiled broadly.
"Come, Armand," he said; "pull up that chair. I suppose we may not smoke here," he added; "though I think I detect the faint suggestion of a miserable cigarette," and he looked at the Princess.
Dehra took a tiny jeweled case from somewhere about her gown and offered it to the King.
"Will Your Majesty try a Nestor?" she said.
Frederick shook his head in repugnance.