"This is no place for you," he said, coldly.
"Geoffrey, I have come to tell you again how I loved you. I ought never to have left you. You will not cast me off from you now?" She spoke pleadingly, and stretched out one white arm as if to draw him to her. "The American girl whom you thought you loved is married. We have only each other, Geoffrey, now. You know you loved me once." She rose to her full height, and looked deep into his eyes, her own on a level with his. "See," she faltered, "I leave a king for you." And she drew forth a little miniature of George the Fifth and flung it on the floor at his feet.
If Geoffrey had ever hesitated, it was not now, though Maggie Windsor was lost to him, and then she had loved him. That was in the old, weak days of his, before Dacre's death. "If Maggie Windsor is married, God bless her!" he replied, simply. Then, walking to the door, he rang the bell.
Mrs. Carey fell back upon the chair crying. Geoffrey left the room. A minute after he had gone she rose, and drying her tears, went to the entrance of the hotel, where she called a carriage and drove back to the Court of St. James. She went directly into the King's anterooms. No one was there but Jawkins.
"Ah, Mrs. Carey—just in time to remind you of our little compact," said he. As she looked at him, he stood, smiling grossly, vulgar, sensual, mean. All the years of her debasement came to her memory with a new sting to her wounded pride, and she swept on, ignoring him.
"Come, come, Eleanor—among old friends, this won't do, you know. Give me your hand. Let's see—what's the price to kiss it now? It used to cost five shillings." And Jawkins imprinted an attempted kiss, clumsily, upon the palm of the hand. "When do you leave the court? They don't like you here overmuch, I fancy. But you've been well advertised."
Mrs. Carey lost control of herself for the first time that day.
"How dare you speak thus to me? I, who was—who am your—"
"Oswald Carey's wife," Jawkins spoke contemptuously.
"Your King's wife!" cried Mrs. Carey. Jawkins laughed and threw back a curtain. Behind it stood the King. He did not look at her, but waved her from him with his hand. She looked at him a minute or two, but then left the room. As the door closed behind her the King looked up.