Meanwhile His Highness entered his mistress’s chamber, with a polite scratch as a “by your leave!” and trotted up to her, holding out the note in his pink mouth.
She looked at the dog in astonishment. Then the handwriting on the envelope caught her eye.
As she did not offer to touch the missive, His Highness presently sat down and crowded up against her knees. Then he laid the letter in her lap.
Her expression became inscrutable as she picked up the letter; while she was reading it there was color in her cheeks; after she had read it there was less.
“I see no necessity,” she said to His Highness—“I see no necessity for his going. I think I ought to tell him so.… He overestimates the importance of a matter which does not concern him.… He is sublimely self-conscious, … a typical man. And if he presumes to believe that the hazard of our encounter is of the slightest moment … to me …”
The dog dropped his head in her lap.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that!” she said, almost sharply, but there was a dry catch in her throat when she spoke, and she laid one fair hand on the head of His Highness.
A few moments later she went down-stairs to the great hall, where she found Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent just finishing their morning cocktails.
When they could at last comprehend that she never began her breakfast with a cocktail, they conducted her solemnly to the breakfast-room, seated her with empressement, and the coffee was served.
It was a delicious, old-fashioned, country breakfast—crisp trout, bacon, eggs, and mounds of fragrant flapjacks.