"Yes.... Do you t-take me for your--wife?"
"Yes, dear----"
"Don't say that!... Is it--over?"
"All over," he said, forcing a gayety that rang hollow in the pathos of the mockery and farce.... But he smiled to be kind to her; and, to make the poor, clouded mind a little happier still, he took her hand again and said very gently:
"Will it surprise you to know that you are now a princess?"
"A--what?" she asked sharply.
"A princess." He smiled benignly on her, and, still beaming, struck a not ungraceful attitude.
"I," he said, "am the Crown Prince of Rumtifoo."
She stared at him without a word; gradually he lost countenance; a vague misgiving stirred within him that he had rather overdone the thing.
"Of course," he began cheerfully, "I am an exile in disguise--er-- disinherited and all that, you know."