“Couldn’t look better or happier, I should say,” was the reassuring answer.
“It is not about the kingdom—I know he is glad to have got rid of that—but do you think he looks like other Englishmen in his position?”
“Yes, exactly; only perhaps rather more thoroughly contented than most of them. But why do you ask?”
“It is because I am always afraid that I keep him back from the things he would naturally like to do. When he brought me here first, whenever the ladies of the neighbourhood came to call, and did not find everything just as they expected, they always said to me, ‘Oh, you are a foreigner, Lady Caerleon. Of course you would not understand.’ And I have always tried to understand, but I can’t make myself really English, and it is a comfort to know that you think I have not done him harm.”
Her face was so anxious that Cyril felt inclined to tease her by inventing some imaginary alteration in Caerleon for which to blame her, but he resisted the temptation, and remarked—
“I don’t wonder at your having felt strange at first, but no one would call you a foreigner now. You seem to have taken to your new country much more kindly than the Queen of Thracia has to hers.”
“Ah, your Queen!” said Nadia. “I wanted to ask you about her. Is she very beautiful? One cannot trust the papers.”
“Well, she has dark hair, which looks copper-coloured in the sun, and very peculiar eyes. They may be either brown or green or grey, and I have seen them appear quite blue. As for being beautiful, she might possibly be pretty if she looked pleasant, but since her marriage I have never seen her anything but decidedly cross.”
“Oh, then she is not happy, poor thing!” said Nadia pityingly. “And every one said it was a love-match!”
“Surely you didn’t believe that stereotyped lie? You must have noticed that the papers trot it out whenever a royal wedding is announced. It is simply put in as a sort of salve to the consciences of the readers. If they were told there was a ghastly tragedy going on behind all the pageantry they are admiring, it might make them feel uncomfortable for a moment, and therefore they jump joyfully at the notion that an unfortunate child of sixteen is madly in love with a blasé and unromantic German just upon fifty!”