“Exactly; and particularly just now. Any one who was inclined to be nasty would find ample material for making trouble in your turning up just before the King comes of age, and when the Queen and he are away, so I thought it best to get you out of the place without provoking a scandal. You know, of course, that I am on my way to Molzau, to the wedding of Princess Theudelinde to Prince Karl Friedrich of Hercynia. It sounds inhospitable to say so, but I hope fervently that your destination is not the same as mine?”
“Oh, no. We wanted to go to Molzau and pretend to be special correspondents—old Mansfield has done something in that way once or twice, knows a man who’s third cousin to an editor, or something of the sort, you know”—Mansfield blushed and looked unhappy;—“we meant to fool around with kodaks and notebooks and make ourselves general nuisances in the orthodox style, but the Governor said that we were sure to be found out, and that it would be bad form.”
“It would—shockingly bad form, to say the least. You are going straight home then? By the bye, if you are disappointed at missing the sights at Molzau, I will send you photographs. Of course I shall have a set.”
“Thanks awfully, uncle. It was really Queen Ernestine that we wanted to see. She’s a tremendously pretty woman, isn’t she? Phil says that she remembers her, but I don’t believe it. Mother fell deeply in love with her too—that time we came to Thracia when we were little kids—and she has infected Mansfield and me with a desire to see her.”
“She is a handsome woman,” said Cyril temperately. “I am afraid it is impossible for you to get a glimpse of her on this journey, Usk, but it is not improbable that you may see her in England some day.”
“On a visit to the Queen, I suppose? Do you know, Uncle Cyril, our infant minds—Phil’s and mine, I mean—were tremendously stirred by your adventures when you escaped with her from Tatarjé. We were always playing at Uncle Cyril and the pretty lady. The game ended up with a wedding, I remember, but the Governor suddenly put a stop to that. He said that our talking of such a thing might do harm, and the game lost its interest afterwards.”
“Good old Caerleon!” was Cyril’s mental observation. “No doubt that was when he got the letter I sent him through Stratford, telling him the state of affairs, and begging him to do what he could for Ernestine in case I got wiped out. And so ‘the subsequent proceedings interested you no more’?” he asked aloud.
“Not much. You see, there were so few vicissitudes after that.”
“Your Excellency was happy in having no history apparently,” said Mansfield.
Cyril smiled, not quite as if he agreed with the remark. “Well, our politics have intervals of dulness, certainly,” he said. “But of late, as you may have noticed in the papers, we have been developing a regular Opposition. It’s a nuisance in some ways, but I am not altogether sorry, for it keeps our men up to the mark to know that there is some one watching to catch them tripping and quite ready to pull them up. The Opposition have got hold of a leader, too, a man named Milénovics, who was in the Cabinet until last year. He used to be a strong supporter of Drakovics, but transferred his affections with the rest when I became Premier, and I thought he was safe. I fancy it must have struck him suddenly that so long as I remained on the stage there was no room for my supporters in the principal part, but that if I were out of office, there might be an opening for youthful talent. However that may be, he ratted, and to-day the fragments of the Drakovics party are rallying round him. That, I think, is the only recent incident of interest in our tranquil political life in Thracia.”