"Ah!" said the King. "Thank you, my dear, that is what I wanted to know."
He went on to the Queen's apartments, and Princess Charlotte stood looking after him. "Poor dear!" she said to herself. She was sorry for him too—very sorry just now; for she had a secret growing within her somewhere between heart and head which, if he knew of it—and some day he would have to know of it—would cause him a great deal of worry.
This young woman with her growing secret was at that time twenty-three.
II
The Princess Charlotte had a way of drawing in a breath as if to speak, and then bottling it. This little performance was at times very telling in its effect—it spoke volumes: it told of a long training in self-repression which still did not come quite naturally: it told of inward combustion, of a tightly cornered but still independent mind. Ladies-in-waiting had seen the Princess run out of her mother's presence to tabber her feet on the inlaid floor of the corridor, thence to return smooth, sweet-tempered, and amiable; for between Charlotte and the Queen there were temperamental differences which had to declare themselves or find safety through emergency exits.
The Princess had no such difficulties with her father, for imperturbability was not one of his characteristics, and imperturbability was the one quality in a parent which the Princess simply could not stand; it made her feel powerless; and to feel powerless toward one's intellectual inferiors is, to certain temperaments, maddening. Charlotte had long since been brought to recognize that her mother, in her own dear way, was quite hopeless: but she was able with astonishing ease to get upon her father's nerves and to trouble his conscience; for while the Queen remained impervious to all influences outside the conventions of her training and her habits, the King was as open to new scruples of conscience as a sieve is to the wind—fresh ideas rattled in his head like green peas in a cullender—when he shook his head it seemed to shake them about, and all the larger ones came uppermost; and the Princess Charlotte had in recent years acquired a habit of entangling her father, with the most engaging simplicity, in moral problems for which constitutional monarchy could find no answer.
She was evidently interested in politics, and when of late the King, wishing to check so dangerous a tendency, had sought to know the reason why, she had answered with perfect frankness: "Max says" (for to her, also, Max, the man born to inaction, had been talking), "Max says he is not sure if he means to come to the throne. If he doesn't, it is just as well I should know something of the business."
The young lady had a most disrespectful way of talking about the monarchy as "the business," and did not say it as if in joke.
"Are you going to business to-day, papa?" was actually the phrase uttered in all seriousness, which had met him one of the days when he went down to open Parliament. But though she spoke thus gracelessly of an important State function she attended it herself with grace, and behaved well.
The Princess Charlotte had learned many things alien to her nature; but she had never learned that correctitude of deportment which is supposed to accompany all those born in the regal purple from the cradle to the grave. She substituted for it, however, something much more individual and charming. Tall and abundantly alive, she moved in soft rushes rather quicker than a walk; and her manner of swimming down a room, with swift invisible run of feet, and just three long undulating bows on the top of all—those three doing duty for so many—was a sight on the decorum of which Court opinion was sharply divided. Yet every one admitted that though she might lack convention or anything in the least resembling "the grand manner"—she had a style of her own; many also—even those who disapproved—admitted her charm. As she talked to her chosen intimates, her two hands would go out in quick bird-like gestures of momentary contact, while her brightly moving face gave a constant invitation to the free entry of her thoughts. Barriers she had none. A dangerous young person for getting her own way; for in the process she often got not only her own but other people's as well.