“You are too flattering,” said the Princess, making him a curtsey, as she had done once in that far-off time; “but I can interpret your meaning with the help of your words and actions then. Ah well, Lord Caerleon, you piqued me not a little in that fortnight, for I could not make you care for me, in spite of all my efforts; but now that I have seen your wife, I can understand, and pardon.”
CHAPTER VIII.
A FAMILY COMPACT.
“I suppose you have met Lord Caerleon before, Ottilie?” said Queen Ernestine to her cousin, with a shade of disapproval in her tone, when the visitors had departed. “You seemed to know him very well.”
“I had every opportunity of knowing him,” responded the Princess, “for he and I were once engaged—for nearly a fortnight.”
“Oh, forgive me, Ottilie,” said the Queen, blushing painfully. “I had no idea that this was the gentleman who——I didn’t mean to recall unpleasant memories. Lady Caerleon is a very handsome woman, is she not?”
“Is that last remark intended to soothe my lacerated feelings?” inquired the Princess, with a merry laugh at this sudden change of subject. “If you only knew it, Nestchen, that is just the most painful part of the matter. Can you conceive that Lord Caerleon had the bad taste to prefer the lady who is now his wife to me?”
“I should prefer not to discuss the subject,” said the Queen, frigidly, but with evident confusion. “If I had had the faintest idea that Lord Caerleon was the person who——I should certainly not have admitted him to my presence.”
“My sweetest Nestchen, if you must play the prude, try to do so with a little discrimination. ‘The person who——’ twice over! Tell me, I entreat you, what poor Lord Caerleon has done?”
“I don’t wish to recall the matter, Ottilie; and I wonder that you should care to make a joke of it.”
“My dear Ernestine,”—there was a dangerous glitter in the Princess’s eyes,—“I must insist on your explaining these extraordinary insinuations. It is quite evident to me that you have picked up an erroneous idea of Lord Caerleon’s conduct in the past, and apparently of mine as well. As I do not choose to lie under imputations of such a kind, I beg of you to tell me exactly what you have heard on the subject, if you wish us to remain friends.”