Meanwhile Mouse had listened with scarcely concealed impatience to all these questions and answers. She sat apparently engrossed in the pages of the Almanac de Gotha, but in reality losing nothing of her friend’s interrogations and implications. At last, out of patience, she closed the little red book and said imperiously to Brancepeth:
“Surely it is time you went on guard? Have you any idea what time it is? Besides, if you don’t mind my saying so, I want to talk about something to the Prince before I go for my drive.”
“I aren’t on guard to-day; but I’ll go, of course, if you want me to go,” murmured Brancepeth sulkily, raising his lazy long limbs out of his comfortable resting-place with a sense of regret, for he would willingly have gone on talking about the lady of the Oratory for another hour.
“Such a dear good boy, but always wanting in tact,” said Lady Kenilworth, as the door of the morning-room closed on him.
“Wanting in reason too. To talk of another woman when he is in the presence of Lady Kenilworth! What obtuseness! what blindness,” said Prince Khris with graceful gallantry. “But Englishmen are always like that. They go all round the world and see nothing but their own umbrellas; they keep on their hats in St. Peter’s, and set up their kodaks at the Taj Mahal. I have always said that a people who could conquer India and yet clothe their Viceroy in a red cloth tunic, are a people without perception. They travel, but they remain islanders. Their minds are enfolded in their bath-towels and sanitary flannels. They do not see beyond the rim of their tubs. But I believe you did me the honor to wish to speak to me? I need not say that if there be the smallest thing in which I can be of service you command my devotion.”
Mouse sat dreamily and irritably opening and shutting the Almanac de Gotha. Prince Khristof wore a wholly altered aspect to her now that she saw him as the father of a woman whom Harry admired and had followed.
“Do you know—such is my insularity—that I never knew you had a daughter or had had a wife?” she said abruptly, as she pushed the book away.
“Dear Madame! you surely have not sent for me to speak of these two ladies?” he said, picking up the little red book. “My deceased wife’s name is here, if you chose to look for it; my daughter’s is not, because she exiled herself into the haute finance. I once had the entire collection of this Almanac since its beginning in 1760. If we want to see how despicably modern editions fall below the standard of all work of the last century, nothing will show us that fact more completely and conclusively than this Almanac. Contrast the commonplace portraits of to-day’s Gotha with the exquisite designs of the eighteenth century kalendars.”
“Yes,” said Mouse shortly: “yes, no doubt. You are always right in matters of art. My dear Prince, how very admirably you have housed those people at Harrenden House. If only the birds were worthy the nest.”
“Ah-ha! It was for this, was it, that you wanted to see me?” he thought, as he said aloud: “I suggested—I merely suggested. I am delighted the result meets your approval. They are excellent people, those good Massarenes. You remember that I told you so in Paris. Des bons gens; de très bons gens. A little uncouth, but the world likes what is simple and fresh.”