“Let us catch him stepping ashore!” the King displayed displeasure.
“And as usual the same mignon youth had the charge of the tiller.”
“I could tell a singular story of that young man,” the Countess said: “for he was once a choir-boy at the Blue Jesus. But, perhaps, I would do better to spare your ears....”
“You would do better, a good deal, to spare my cinerarias,” her Dreaminess murmured, sauntering slowly on.
Sun so bright, trees so green, it was a perfect day. Through the glittering fronds of the palms shone the lake like a floor of silver glass strewn with white sails.
“It’s odd,” the King observed, giving the dog Teddywegs a sly prod with his cane, “how he follows Yousef.”
“He seems to know!” the Queen replied.
A remark that so annoyed the Prince that he curtly left the garden.
VIII
But this melancholy period of crêpe, a time of idle secrets, and unbosomings, was to prove fatal to the happiness of Mademoiselle de Nazianzi. She now heard she was not the first in the Prince’s life, and that most of the Queen’s maids, indeed, had had identical experiences with her own. She furthermore learned, amid ripples of laughter, of her lover’s relations with the Marquesa Pizzi-Parma and of his light dealings with the dancer April Flowers, a negress (to what depths??) at a time when he was enjoying the waxen favours of the wife of his Magnificence, the Master of the Horse.