“Good girl! Wise girl!” exclaimed Von Glauben. “Ach, if all the beautiful women so guarded their tongues and obeyed their husbands, what a happy world it would be!”
The King turned upon him.
“True! But you are not bound by the confidences of marriage, Professor,—so that while in our service our will must be your law! You, therefore, can perhaps tell me the name of the fortunate man who has wedded this fair lady?”
The Professor’s countenance visibly reddened.
“Sir,” he stammered—“With every respect for your Majesty, I would rather lose my much-to-be-appreciated post with you than betray my friends!”
The King suddenly lost patience.
“By Heaven!” he exclaimed, “Is my command to be slighted and set aside as if it were naught? Not while I am king of this country! What mystery is here that I am not to know?”
Gloria laughed outright, and the pretty ripple of mirth, so unforced and natural, diverted the monarch’s irritation.
“Oh, you are angry!” she said, her lovely eyes twinkling and sparkling like diamonds:—“So! Then your Majesty is no more than a very common man who loses temper when he cannot have his own way!” She laughed again, and the King stared at her unoffended,—being spellbound, both by her regal beauty, and her complete indifference to himself. “I will speak like the prophets do in the Bible and say, ‘Lo! there is no mystery, O King!’ I am only poor Gloria, a sailor’s wife,—and the sailor has a place on board your son the Crown Prince’s yacht, and he does not want his master to know that he is married lest he lose that place! Is not that plain and clear, O King? And why should I disobey my beloved in such a simple matter?”
The King was still in something of a fume.