"It was that which was marked on our passports and safe-conducts. But" (here he yawned courteously behind his hand) "perhaps your Highness has remarked that though the Buonapartes are doubtless all great rascals, their female kind have a habit of being deucedly pretty and liberal-minded women!"
"But why then did your cousin mix himself up with little blackamoors?"
"Chacun à son gout!" said Wargrove, lightly. "I always knew that my taste in women was better than Southies. So he got what I tell you, and I"—(he fingered at a ribbon), "I got the Order of the Golden Fleece—Murat's own, which he had brought from Madrid after the Dos de Mayo. Murat was pleased with me. I read the burial service over Southwald out of a prayer-book his mother had written his name in, with Murat and his Frenchmen standing round with bared heads like gentlemen, though they could never have seen a priest before in a Guards' uniform."
"And the girl?" demanded the Duke. "Of course she was sought for and punished?"
Wargrove sighed long and then paused to give his words wing. "Not at all," he said. "I think the general feeling was that Southwald was a fool and deserved what he got. I know that was my own impression!"
"Jove!" cried the Duke, suddenly wroth, "I shall not suffer this, Wargrove. You mean me!"
"That," said Wargrove, with a face like a statue hewn in granite, "is precisely as your Highness pleases."