As I stooped to recover it the queen said hoarsely in my ear:
"Who is that girl?"
I turned; she snatched the jewel and dug it into her hair.
"That girl, madame, is Thusis, my housekeeper."
"Fiddle," retorted the queen. "She's something else, too,—or once was. The first time I noticed her it occurred to me that I'd seen her somewhere. What was she—a celebrated dancer?—before she became your housekeeper?"
The queen's nasty insolence froze me.
"I am not," said I, "as familiar with celebrated dancers as your husband is—and the various men of your immediate family."
That I had penetrated her incognito did not appear to disturb her as much as my inferences concerning Tino and the Kaiser and that degenerate nest of reptiles, her nephews.
A white, pinched expression came into her frosty face and her eyes flamed.
"I thought you were a Yankee," she said.