Cyril was sitting in the balcony belonging to his appartement in the Hôtel Waldthier at Ludwigsbad, and a young man came hurriedly to the window in answer to his summons. There was nothing in any way remarkable about the new secretary’s appearance—at least to an English eye. Brown-haired and hazel-eyed, tall, broad-shouldered, and carelessly dressed, he would have been passed over at home as “a most ordinary-looking man,” but on the Continent it was his fate to attract attention as a typical Englishman wherever he went.
“Have you found anything in the papers about our business?” Cyril asked him.
“I was just going to bring your Excellency this.” Mansfield tendered a Vindobona evening journal to his employer.
“Just read me the paragraph. And by the way, don’t ‘Excellency’ me in private. The King was good enough to continue me in the use of the title when I left Thracia, but it may be kept for state occasions. And don’t call me ‘sir,’ as you have done once or twice, or it will get about that I am arrogating to myself princely honours. I must ask you to address me as ‘Count,’ if your instinctive veneration for me demands the use of some epithet.”
The reproof was given so genially that it was impossible to take offence, and Mansfield, who had grown very red, returned gradually to his normal colour, and translated the paragraph with very fair fluency:—
“The London ‘Fleet Street Gazette’ publishes a telegram from its correspondent in Czarigrad which exposes a deep-laid conspiracy on the part of the Jews to possess themselves of Palestine. A concession is on the point of being obtained from the Grand Seignior which authorises the development of the whole country by a Hebrew syndicate, and its colonisation by Jewish immigrants. The intermediary at Czarigrad is understood to have been the Englishman Mortimer, of Thracian notoriety.”
Mansfield’s voice dropped when he came to the last word, and he glanced fearfully at Cyril, expecting to find him pained, possibly indignant; but seeing that he was smoking placidly, he took heart of grace.
“I expected this. Are you a thin-skinned person, Mansfield?”
“I don’t think so—I really don’t know,” stammered Mansfield.
“I mean, can you stand being generally cold-shouldered, if not actually cut? Do you yearn for constant communion with your kind?”