“I can’t make you out, Phil,” said Lord Caerleon doubtfully, as he left her. Presently he returned, pulling at his moustache in a way that showed him to be still puzzled.
“Well, Phil, I have given him your message, and he accepts it as merely his due. I can swear I’ve done my best to choke him off, but he won’t have it. I think he understands that he’s not to come hanging about the hotel, setting people talking, but he may do what he can, without making you conspicuous, to prepossess you in his favour—in conversation and so on. He seems very well satisfied, and I hope you are. I wish with all my heart you were safely engaged to—er—some other fellow.”
“Are you determining to turn me out of doors if I accept King Michael, father? Don’t you think your way of receiving a king as a would-be son-in-law is just a little—original?”
“Why, Phil?” cried her father in distress, catching sight at last of the tears in her eyes.
“Oh, father, I’m so miserable—so frightened—I don’t know what to do!” and Philippa laid her golden head on his shoulder, and sobbed there comfortably, as if she had gone back ten years, and been a little girl again.
“Do you want me to get rid of the fellow for you, Phil? I’ll do it like a shot. King or no king, I won’t have him making you cry with his silly nonsense.”
“No, no, it’s not that. Lend me your handkerchief, father dear. This lace thing is no good. Don’t you think mother would come home now?”
“I’m sure she would. I’ll go and ask her,” and poor Lord Caerleon went away thoroughly puzzled. Hitherto nothing had ever interrupted the perfect understanding between Philippa and himself, but now he was realising miserably that his little daughter had become a woman, and Lord Caerleon had always confessed that he did not understand women.
“Mansfield,” said Usk abruptly, when he and his friend were leaving the Consulate in company a little later, “that idiot is after Philippa again.”
“What, that Thracian beast?” Mansfield’s language was far from choice, but he was not without provocation. “Well, your father will soon kick him out.”