"You want me to return to the palace, with you, at once?" the King asked.
"I have no wish to hurry you, sir," the Duke replied. "But the sooner you return to the palace, and the Royal Standard is run up again on the palace flagstaff, the sooner will the existing state of a national emergency be at an end."
"I will come with you at once," the King said. "But first of all—I must take leave of my friends."
His eyes were fixed, as he spoke, on Judith, who had just reappeared, alone, on the verandah.
The Duke followed the King's glance. Then he fell back, two or three paces, and bowed with the hint of formality by which he was in the habit of suggesting, so subtly, and yet so unmistakably, that he was dealing with—the King.
The King moved straight across the lawn to Judith.
Judith stepped down from the verandah, and came slowly forward towards him.
They met on the edge of the lawn.
"I am going back to town, at once, with the Duke," the King announced. "The Duke has come to fetch me. The crisis is over. The strike has failed. But you know that, of course—"
He paused there, for a moment, suddenly conscious of the utter ineptitude of what he was saying—