“You forget!” he said slowly, “you have, up to the present deceived the girl. She does not know who you are. When she hears that you have played a part,—that you are no sailor in the service of the Crown Prince, as you have apparently represented yourself to be, but the Crown Prince himself, what will she say to you? Perhaps she will hate you for the deception, as much as she now loves you!”
A shadow darkened the young Prince’s open countenance, but it soon passed away.
“She will never hate me!” he said,—“For when I do tell her the truth, it will be when I have resigned all the ridiculous pomp and circumstance of my position for her sake——”
“Perhaps she will not let you resign it!” said the King; “She may be as unselfish as she is beautiful!”
There was a slight, very slight note of derision in his voice, and the Prince caught it up at once.
“You wrong yourself, Sir, more than you wrong my wife by any lurking misjudgment of her,” he said, with singularly masterful and expressive dignity. “As her husband, and the guardian of her honour, I also claim her obedience. What I desire is her law!”
The King laughed a little forcedly.
“Evidently you have found the miracle of the ages, Humphry!” he said; “A woman who obeys her master! Well! Let us talk no more of it. You have been guilty of an egregious folly,—but nothing can make your marriage otherwise than morganatic. And when the State considers a Royal alliance for you advisable, you will be compelled to obey the country’s wish,—or else resign the Throne.”
“I shall obey the country’s wish most decidedly,” said the Prince, “unless it asks me to commit bigamy,—as you suggest,—in which case I shall decline! Three or four Royal sinners of this class I know of, who for all their pains have not succeeded in winning the attachment of their people, either for themselves or their heirs. Their people know what they are, well enough, and despise their fraudulent position as heartily as I do! I am perfectly convinced that if it were put to the vote of the country, no people in the world would wish their future monarch to be a bigamist!”
“How you stick to a word and a phrase!” exclaimed the King irritably; “The morganatic rule does away with the very idea of bigamy!”