“Your Majesty, His Excellency had promised me a ring if I studied my solfeggi as I ought. I laboured for hours daily. The ring was bought—I knew that—but I was not to see it until my birthday. And then a terrible thing happened. In arranging the flowers I knocked down his famous Pompeian figurino and broke it!”
Dramatic pause. Cries of sympathy and horror from the ladies. Her Majesty laughing at Emma’s tragic face.
“My good husband was furious. My birthday should not be kept. I should have no ring. Was it fair, Your Majesty, Ladies? I decided it was not.”
“No, not fair!” they chorused. “A bargain is a bargain!”
“So I thought. And the night before my birthday, while my husband slept I turned out his pockets! Ladies, behold a brigand! I found the case. I put on the ring, and in the morning I wished myself many happy returns in his presence and flourished the ring in his face!”
Loud applause. Cries of “Were you forgiven?”
“Ladies, need you ask? What husband does not forgive his wife if she plays her game rightly? Next day he asked my forgiveness. But the ring is useful as a reminder.”
She asked a thousand pardons of Her Majesty and made her gay curtsey and went off again, and kneeling close, with her mouth at his ear, told the story, trembling, to Sir William. He approved warmly.
“Splendid—done as it was on the spur of the moment! She will get that paper to-night if it exists. Oh, Emma, I am but a burden on you, ill and in pain as I am, and this may be vital.”
“I can manage it,” she said, and fell into deepest thought.