“You are early, Count,” said the Premier, with a start. “Are you”—he smiled unpleasantly—“the bearer of any message from the Queen?”
“No; I have not seen her Majesty to-day. But why should you ask, when you have just been with her yourself?”
“You are too modest, Count. We all know that the post of Court Minister is a far more important and confidential one—at least under a female sovereign—than that of Premier.”
“Not quite up to the mark to-day, are you?” asked Cyril, sympathetically, leaning forward to look at his chief more closely. “Feeling a little bit run down, eh? You must take a holiday, Drakovics. We can’t afford to lose you.” “If that doesn’t draw him, nothing will,” he added to himself.
“I am in my ordinary health,” was the response, uttered with ungrateful roughness, “and in any case, Count, you are not my physician. You occupy a far more delicate and delightful position, as keeper of the Queen’s conscience—or shall we say of her Majesty’s heart?”
“May I ask what you mean by that remark?”
“The meaning is quite patent to my mind.”
“It is not so to mine. I must request an explanation.”
“You shall have it—in the presence of the rest of the Cabinet,” and M. Drakovics rose to lead the way into the larger room, but Cyril stood before the door.
“No, monsieur. As long as I thought your extraordinary remarks were due to illness, or intended as jokes, I allowed them to pass; but since they appear to conceal an innuendo of some kind, I insist upon an explanation before you leave this room.”