"Aye, marry, you may say it! But I meant the Princess's wilicoats!"
"No," said I, as curtly as I could, for the subject had its obvious limitations.
"Ah, they are pretty ones," said Karl, "I assure you. She has at least an undeniable taste in lace and cambric. They say in other lands—not in this—though I would not hinder them if they did—that she wears the under-garments of men and rules the state. But I think not so. The Princess is a better Queen than wife, a better woman than either."
On this subject also I had nothing to say which I dared venture to the husband of the Lady Ysolinde.
"She read my horoscope," said I, weakly, searching for something in the corners of my brain to change the subject.
"How so?" said the Prince, quickly.
"First in a crystal and then in a pool of ink," I replied.
"It was a good horoscope and of a fortunate ending?"
"On the whole—yes!" said I; "though there was much in it that I could not understand."
"Like enow!" laughed the Prince; "I warrant she could not understand it herself! It is ever the way of the ink-pool folk."