"And do you mean to tell me," I gasped, "that the Princess Margaretta is not a widow, not--not a relation of the Romanoffs, but--but a small grocer's actual wife?"
"Not such a small grocer's as you might think. I could give you a banker's reference which perhaps would startle you. It isn't always them, you know, who carry things off with the biggest air who are the biggest."
"But," I cried, "are you aware, sir, that the person whom you assert to be your wife, has, here in Beachington, laid claim to Royal rank?"
The little man's air of modest pride disappeared with even comic suddenness.
"Not to Royal rank? Not quite to Royal rank, I hope?"
"But I say yes--I say yes. She told me with her own lips that she was a near relation to the Russian Czar."
Mr Dowsett began again to wring his hands.
"Oh, Eliza, what have you done?"
"If the person you refer to as 'Eliza'--great powers, what a name!--is the person who calls herself the Princess Margaretta, then she has been guilty of the most impudent fraud of which I ever heard, and proved herself to be a swindler of the purest water."
Mr Dowsett stared, or, rather, glared at me. He drew himself to his full height--five foot three inches. He turned pale with rage; he actually shook his fist in my face.