"I don't think it's the least absurd," said Tony, who had now completely recovered his normal composure. "I think it's the most beautifully reasonable thing that's ever happened. Of course you are a queen, or ought to be a queen. I felt that the moment I met you." He paused, and taking out his case lighted himself a fresh cigarette. "It was the Livadian part of the business that knocked me out so completely," he explained.
Isabel nodded her head. "I know," she said. "I heard you say that you knew Pedro and Da Freitas. That was one of the things that made me feel I ought to tell you."
"It only shows," remarked Tony with quiet satisfaction, "that the Early Christian Fathers were quite right. If one has faith and patience one generally gets what one wants sooner or later. All my life I have had a secret craving to be mixed up in some really high-class conspiracy; with kings and queens and bombs and wonderful mysterious people crawling about trying to assassinate each other. I was just beginning to be afraid that all that kind of thing was extinct." He drew in a long mouthful of smoke, and let it filter out luxuriously into the still, warm air. "How very fortunate I happened to be in Long Acre, wasn't it?"
"I am so glad you feel like that," said Isabel happily. "I was afraid you wouldn't want to help me any more when you knew all about it."
"But I don't know all about it yet," objected Tony. "Hadn't you better begin right at the beginning and tell me everything?"
For a moment Isabel hesitated.
"Well," she said slowly. "I suppose that what you would call the beginning—the real beginning—was a long time before I was born. You see my grandfather always had an idea that he ought to be king of Livadia, because he said there was something wrong about somebody's marriage or something back in sixteen hundred and fifty—at least I think that was the date."
"It was a very careless century," said Tony.
"He didn't bother much about it himself," went on Isabel, "because he hated Livadia and liked to live in Paris or London. Besides I think they made him an allowance to keep out of the country. Father was quite different. He always wanted to be a king, and directly my grandfather died, he started doing everything he could to get what he called 'his rights.'"
"I can never understand any intelligent man wanting to be a king," observed Tony thoughtfully. "One would have to associate entirely with successful people, and they are always so horribly busy and conceited."