He noted that, contrary to her appearance in the afternoon, when she had worn a smart costume and hat which was evidently the latest creation of the Rue de la Paix, she was now very neatly, almost shabbily dressed in a plain blue serge coat and skirt which had seen its best days, a small, close-fitting little hat which showed evident signs of wear, and sadly worn furs.
She noticed that he surveyed her as she took the armchair he offered her.
“Yes,” she said, “it is very fortunate that my maid, Renata, is about the same figure as myself, and that her clothes fit me. I usually pass as her when I go out at night. The sentries change every week, so as long as I am dressed as a maid I have no difficulty—though I sometimes have trouble to avoid the other servants.”
“I should think you run very great risks of recognition,” he remarked. “And if the truth leaked out would there not be some serious trouble?”
“Trouble! Oh, I dread to think of it!” she declared with a shrug of the shoulders. “I receive daily lectures about my non-observance of the social amenities, my lack of personal pride, and all that. But there—Mr Waldron, you must, I know, have been greatly surprised at meeting me to-day. I know I deceived you. But it was imperative, as I was then travelling incognita. So I hope you will forgive me.”
“You practised a very cruel deception upon me,” he said with mock severity. “And I don’t know if I really ought to forgive you.”
“Oh yes, you will—you dear old thing,” she cried persuasively, laughing in his face. He was double her age, therefore the endearing terms in which she addressed him were not exactly out of place. Yet, remembering the secret lover, he wondered what had become of him.
“Then old Gigleux was not your uncle, after all?” remarked Waldron, for he remembered how Jack Jerningham had recognised him on that New Year’s night at Shepheard’s.
“No. Listen and I’ll tell you the truth,” the Princess said in very good English. She was delightfully unconventional. “You see my aunt, the Queen, was very much annoyed because I motored to Florence alone, and some gossip got about regarding me—because I went to a fancy-dress ball with a gentleman I know. Well, I fear I was a little hot-tempered, with the result that I was unceremoniously packed off on a long tour to Egypt and given into the charge of Miss Lambert and old Ghelardi, who had been in the German Service, but who had just returned to Italy and was appointed by the King as Chief of our Secret Police. I was ordered by the King to assume the name of Duprez, while Ghelardi was to be known as Jules Gigleux. And I think we kept up the farce fairly well—didn’t we?”
“Most excellently. Nobody had the slightest suspicion of the truth, I feel sure.”