Said Bertham:
“You do not call the First Napoleon that?”
“There was a terrible grandeur,” she returned, “about that bloodstained, unrelenting, icy, ambitious despot; a halo of old, great martial deeds surrounds his name that blinds the eyes to his rapacity and meanness, his selfishness, sensuality, and greed. But this son of Hortense! this nephew, if he be a nephew?—this charlatan trailing in the mire the sumptuous rags of the Imperial purple; this gentlemanly, silken-mannered creature, with phrases of ingratiating flattery upon his tongue, and hatred glimmering between the half-drawn blinds of those sick, sluggish eyes.... God grant, for England’s sake, that he may never mount the throne of St. Louis!”
“Ah! Ada—Ada!” Bertham said again, and laughed, awkwardly for one whose mirth was so melodious and graceful as a rule. For the little dinner at Wraye House, at which the Secretary for Foreign Affairs and the French Ambassador were to meet the Pretender to the Imperial Throne of France, was really a diplomatic meeting of somewhat serious political importance, in view of certain changes and upheavals taking place in that restless country on the other side of the Channel, and divers signs and tokens, indicative to an experienced eye that the White Flag, for eighteen years displayed above the Central Pavilion of the Palace of the Tuileries, might shortly be expected to come down.
XX
However, being a skillful diplomat, Bertham gave no sign: though Lord Walmerston, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Pretender to the Throne-Imperial of France, were to spend in the Persian smoking-room over the ground-floor billiard-room of Wraye House—a half-hour that would change every card in the poor hand held by that last-named gamester to a trump.
“Who is good enough for you, Ada?” he said, with his hazel glance softening as he turned it upon her, and sincerity in his sweet, courtly tones. “No one I ever met!”
Her rare and lovely smile illuminated her.
“Has it never struck you, Robert, how curious it is that the demand for entire possession of a woman’s hand, fortune and person, should invariably be prefaced by the candid statement that the suitor is not good enough to tie her shoes? As for being good enough for me, any man would be, provided he were honest, sincere, chivalrous in word and deed——”
“And not the present Head of the House of Bonaparte?” ended Bertham.