“Princess Ottilie of Mœsia.”
“A girl I have never spoken to in my life!” Caerleon’s tone was one of hopeless bewilderment.
“Oh yes, you have. You danced with her at the State ball two years ago, when the Mœsias visited England, don’t you remember? The King looked on and smiled approvingly, and the chaperons began to put their heads together and discuss seriously the best way of preventing foreign royalties from carrying off the biggest things in the marriage market. I believe they came to the conclusion that no princess ought ever to be allowed to marry a subject. With princes it was different, of course. You can’t have forgotten?”
“I remember her—a black-eyed, rather bouncing girl. But you don’t mean,” and Caerleon grew hot and cold as the recollection came back to him of the chaff he had endured from his friends on account of the unmistakable favour shown him by the royal guests,—“you don’t mean that they are on the track of that foolery again? They must be made to understand at once that it’s absolutely impossible. You never believed it?”
“I was very glad to hear it.”
“What! when you know that it’s less than a month since I asked Nadia O’Malachy to marry me, and that I would willingly chuck up the kingdom to-day if she would only take me?”
“I hoped,” said Cyril, deliberately, “that you regarded that affair as over and done with, and were intending to sacrifice your private feelings and do the best thing for the country.”
“You thought I was intending to be a scoundrel?”
“I wish you would not be melodramatic,” said Cyril, pathetically. “Here we are, between the devil, which is Scythia, and the deep sea of the neutrality of the other Powers, and you have the chance of settling everything on a firm foundation by marrying a very handsome girl belonging to one of the oldest houses in Europe. I am not given to preaching, but I do say that it would be a sin not to sacrifice your feelings in such a case, and marry her. The marriage would simply be the making of you and Thracia both.”
“I—will—not—do—it,” said Caerleon, forcing out the words slowly.