“After dinner! Then surely it should have been in a more favourable mood to myself, that has done M. Albany no harm,” I said. “I do not wonder that M. Albany has lost so many of his friends if he settles their destinies after dinner.”
At first he frowned at this and then he laughed outright.
“Ma foi!” he cried, “here's another Greig to call me gomeral to my face,” and he lounged to a chair where he sunk in inextinguishable laughter.
But if I had brought laughter from him I had precipitated anger elsewhere.
“Here's a pretty way to speak to his Royal Highness,” cried Miss Walkinshaw, her face like thunder. “The manners of the Mearns shine very poorly here. You forget that you speak to one that is your prince, in faith your king!”
“Neither prince nor king of mine, Miss Walkinshaw,” I cried, and turned to go. “No, if a hundred thousand swords were at his back. I had once a notion of a prince that rode along the Gallowgate, but I was then a boy, and now I am a man—which you yourself have made me.”
With that I bowed low and left them. They neither of them said a word. It was the last I was to see of Clementina Walkinshaw and the last of Charles Edward.