“And they were the only ones that remained faithful?”
“My dear Caerleon, pray don’t be so tragic. A man doesn’t want further depressing when he has come to such glorious smash already as I have. No, Paschics is persistently and stupidly determined to follow my fallen fortunes. I left him in London, to delude the interviewers. And Dietrich is also in my train, more taciturn than ever now that his belief in my star has been so rudely shattered. Oh, and by the bye, there is an old Jew named Goldberg, whom you may remember hearing of. When I was passing through Vienna, he came and played the Good Samaritan. There is a sum of two million florins about which he and I had dealings together once, and he informs me that when it was returned to him he invested it at once in my name, and that it is at my service now. I daresay I shall go and stay with him a little later on. Those are all that I have found faithful among the faithless, I believe.”
“But the Queen, Uncle Cyril?” asked Usk. “You said that she always supported you. Did she change sides, or has she really gone mad? The papers hint at all kinds of things.”
Cyril looked round upon the group with a rather strained smile. “I don’t want to sound melodramatic,” he said, “but I should feel deeply obliged if you would mention the Queen’s name to me as little as possible. Her Majesty chose suddenly to forsake my advice, and adopt that of my bitterest enemy, and that sort of thing puts a man a little out of conceit with her.”
“I can’t stand this any longer,” said Caerleon hoarsely. “This place is too hot, or draughty, or something. For goodness’ sake, Cyril, come out on the terrace and have a smoke.”
“Anything for a quiet life!” said Cyril, acquiescing readily.
“Oh, mother!” cried Philippa, as the door closed behind her father and uncle, “it was worse than that, I’m sure. He loved her, and she has played him false. Didn’t you see his face?”
“He is awfully changed since we saw him less than a month ago,” said Usk.
“I should scarcely have known him to be the same man,” Mansfield agreed.
“Oh, how could she? how could she?” cried Philippa. “To draw him on, and win his love, and then throw him over—a splendid man like Uncle Cyril! The wicked woman, I hate her! It is not a thing to be cried over”—and she dashed away an indignant tear as she spoke—“I should like to kill her! She has taken all the best years of his life, and left him