'Rather an indiscreet person, your friend the Dictator,' Soame Rivers said to Mrs. Sarrasin. 'How can he know that some of these people here may not be in sympathy with Orizaba, and may not send out a telegram to let people know there that he has arranged for a descent upon the shores of Gloria? Gad! I don't wonder that the Gloria people kicked him out, if that is his notion of statesmanship.
'The Gloria people, as a people, adore him, sir,' Mrs. Sarrasin sternly observed.
'Odd way they have of showing it,' Rivers replied.
'We, in this country, have driven out kings,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'and have taken them back and set them on their thrones again.'
'Some of them we have not taken back, Mrs. Sarrasin.'
'We may yet—or some of their descendants.'
Mrs. Sarrasin became, for the moment, and out of a pure spirit of contradiction, a devoted adherent of the Stuarts and a wearer of the Rebel Rose.
'Oh, I say, this is becoming treasonable, Mrs. Sarrasin. Do have some consideration for me—the private secretary of a Minister of State.'
'I have great consideration for you, Mr. Rivers; I bear in mind that you do not mean half what you say.'
'But don't you really think,' he asked in a low tone, 'that your Dictator was just a little indiscreet when he talked so openly about his plans?'