"I surmise I'd expect a visitor of mine, whether he's the Kaiser, the King, or the President," retorted Lady Beauvayse, "to be a gentleman!" Her beautiful eyes blazed with genuine ire as she gave back von Herrnung's dominating stare. She continued, reverting more purposefully than ever to the exaggerated New York accent, mingling cutting Yankee humour with bitter irony in the sentences that twanged, one after another, off her sharp American tongue: "And I guess, Count von Herrnung—though between your father and Amos J. Sculpin of Madison Avenue, New York, and Sculpin Towers, Schenectady, there's considerable of a social gulf—if your Emperor had been a house-guest of my parpa's, and my elder brother"—she lifted an exquisite shoulder significantly ceilingwards—"had happened to get the hoist—parpa'd just have said: 'Your Imperial Majesty, I am unexpectedly one boy short, and far from feeling hunkey. My cars are waiting at my door to convey you right-away to your hotel. Look in on us after the interment, when Mrs. Sculpin has had time to get accustomed to her mourning. And as my chef had orders to serve a special dinner in honour of your Majesty, I shall be gratified by your taking the hull menoo along—outside instead of in!'"
The Goblin cackled. Ecstatic Brayham shrieked:
"Magnificent, by Gad! He ought to know your father!" Franky and Courtley yielded unrestrainedly to mirth, as did the Saxham girl. While her teeth, dazzling as those of a Newfoundland pup, gleamed in her wide red mouth, and her long eyes glittered between their narrowed eyelids, von Herrnung gave her a quick sidelong glance of anger. She caught the look, and suddenly ceased to laugh, as the young Newfoundland might have stopped barking. She said below her breath:
"Vexed? ... Why, you're really! ... And Lady Beau wasn't joking about your brother.... She wouldn't dream of such a thing! .... She's tremendously kind and sympathetic. Was he—your brother—nice? ..."
"Most women thought so."
"Would I have thought so? What was he like?" the girl persisted.
Von Herrnung turned in his chair so as to face her, answering:
"You see him now, with one difference. He was as black as I am red."
The blue eyes of the man and the long agate-coloured eyes of the young woman encountered. She said slowly in her warm, deep voice, less like a feminine contralto than the masculine baritone:
"I like—red men—best!"