“You are to drink a small portion of that brandy,” she said, “and then put the rest in your coffee. You must eat a good breakfast, and that will help you to forget your troubles,—that is, if you have any real troubles.”
“Oh, my troubles are real enough,” said the young man. “When I met you before, Princess, I was reasonably successful. We even talked about ambassadorships, didn’t we, in spite of the fact that ambassadors were making themselves unnecessarily obtrusive that night? Now you see before you a ruined man. No, I am not joking; it is true. I was given a commission, or, rather, knowing the danger there was in it, I begged that the commission might be given me. It was merely to take a letter from St. Petersburg to London. I have failed, and when that is said, all is said.”
“But surely,” cried the girl, blushing guiltily as she realized that this was the man she had been sent to rob, “you could not be expected to ward off such a lawless attempt at murder as you have been the victim of?”
“That is just what I expected, and what I supposed I could ward off. In my profession—which, after all has a great similarity to yours, except that I think we have to do more lying in ours—there must be no such word as fail. The very best excuses are listened to with tolerance, perhaps, and a shrug of the shoulders; but failure, no matter from what cause, is fell doom. I have failed. I shall not make any excuses. I will go to London and say merely, ‘The Russian police have robbed me.’ Oh, I know perfectly well who did the trick, and how it was done. Then I shall send in my resignation. They will accept it with polite words of regret, and will say to each other, ‘Poor fellow, he had a brilliant career before him, but he got drunk, or something, and fell into the ditch.’ Ah, well, we won’t talk any more about it.”
“Then you don’t despise the newspaper profession, Lord Donal?”
“Despise it! Bless you, no: I look up to it. Belonging myself to a profession very much lower down in the scale of morality, as I have said. But, Princess,” he added, leaning towards her, “will you resign from the newspaper if I resign from diplomacy?”
The girl slowly shook her head, her eyes on the tablecloth before her.
“I will telegraph my resignation,” he said impetuously, “if you will telegraph yours to your paper.”
“You are feeling ill and worried this morning, Lord Donal, and so you take a pessimistic view of life. You must not resign.”
“Oh, but I must. I have failed, and that is enough.”