“I will answer that!” said Lotys, her eyes flashing, her bosom heaving, and her whole figure instinct with pride and passion; “The King could do everything! The King could be a man if he chose, instead of a dummy! The King could cease to waste his time on fools and light women!—and though he is, and must be a constitutional Monarch, he could so rule all social matters as to make them the better,—not the worse for his influence! There is nothing to prevent the King from doing his most kingly duty!”
Leroy looked at her for a moment in silence.
“Madame, if the King heard your words he might perhaps regret his many follies!” he said courteously;—“But where Society is proved worse, instead of better for a king’s influence, is it not somewhat too late to remedy the evil? What of the Queen?”
“The Queen is queen from necessity, not from choice!” said Lotys;—“She has never loved her husband. If she had loved him, perhaps he might,—through her,—have loved his people more!”
There was a note of pathos in her voice that was singularly tender and touching. Anon, as if impatient with herself, she turned to Sergius Thord.
“We must disperse!” she said abruptly; “Daybreak will be upon us before we know it, and we have done no business at all this evening. To enrol three new associates is a matter of fifteen minutes; the rest of our time has been wasted!”
“Do not say so, Madame!” interposed Max Graub, “You have three new friends—three new ‘sons of your blood,’ as you so poetically call them,—though, truly, I for one am more fit to be your grandfather! And do you consider the time wasted that has been spent in improving and instructing your newly-born children?”
Lotys turned upon him with a look of disdain.
“You are a would-be jester;” she said coldly; “Old men love a jest, I know, but they should take care to make it at the right time, and in the right place. They should not play with edge-tools such as I am, though I suppose, being a German, you think little or nothing of women?”
“Madame!” protested Graub, “I think so much of women that I have never married! Behold me, an unhappy bachelor! I have spared any one of your beautiful sex from the cruel martyrdom of having to endure my life-long company!”