“Not in the least. He is counting on our cash giving out. He knows to a piastre what he left in the treasury, and can calculate what we could raise in the way of advances out of our own pockets, and perhaps—as you once suggested—by selling your jewels. He thinks, no doubt, that we shall be stranded just about the time that the elections come off—I refrained purposely from hurrying them on in order to give him a little pleasurable excitement—that we shall try frantically to borrow money all over Europe and be unable to do it, that the army will mutiny for want of pay, and that the permanent officials everywhere will turn to the man who was so long responsible for their salaries, and that he will have a walk-over. That is as may be.”
“But how is it that we shall not be stranded?”
“Ah, that is a state secret.”
“But it ought not to be kept a secret from me.”
“I’m afraid it must be, in this case. You see, if your mother or any of your relations ask you where we got the money, I want you to be able to answer with a clear conscience that you don’t know.”
“But why should they ask? I daresay Ottilie will—she is always interested in politics—but I don’t think it would occur to my mother.”
“Not unless she was put up to it, but it would not surprise me if she was. Did I understand you to mean that the Princess of Dardania is coming here?”
“Yes; she has been talking of it for some time, but in her letter this morning she says that she hopes to come as soon as the elections are over, and to bring the children as well.”
“‘When the hurly-burly’s done; when the battle’s lost and won’? Does she intend to stay long?”
“Not long in Bellaviste, I think, but she talks of taking a villa at Praka for the summer. They have no sea-coast in Dardania, of course, and it will be so good for the children to spend a month or two by the sea. It will be delightful for me to have her so close. I daresay I shall take Michael and two or three attendants, and stay with her for a week or so.”