“Oh yes,” she cried quickly. “No doubt you’ve been told some awful tales about my doings—stories which get about Rome, and everyone exaggerates them as they pass from mouth to mouth. My worst offence, I believe, is because I entered for a motor-cycle race and won it. Well, haven’t your girls in England won similar races?”
“True, but what a shop-assistant may do is forbidden to a princess,” was his reproof.
“Ah, that’s just it?” she exclaimed in protest. “Merely because I happen to be born a princess I’m supposed to put on a veneer of Court manners, and observe Court etiquette day in and day out, until it all bores me stiff—as you say in English. Just because I try and behave like other girls, obtain my freedom when I can, and enjoy myself with open-air pursuits, I am held in horror by Their Majesties, and the people declare that I am a disgrace to our Royal House.”
“No—not a disgrace, Princess.”
“Lola, please,” she said, correcting him.
“Lola then—if you will have it so,” he said. “The people secretly admire you for your courage in breaking the steel bonds of Court etiquette; nevertheless remember that such escapades as yours must lead you into danger—grave personal danger. You are a girl, and remember also that there are some blackguards about who, knowing your active and daring temperament, may entrap you and then levy blackmail upon you.”
Her beautiful face instantly fell. He saw that she grew paler and more thoughtful. Her lips twitched slightly.
“You think so,” she said slowly, her voice so changed that he wondered. “You think that someone might really attempt to levy blackmail upon me—eh?”
“Certainly. And in that lies the very serious peril to which you must be exposed, if you continue to disregard the conventionalities which surround you as a daughter of a Royal House.”
“You are rather hard upon me, Mr Waldron,” she said in a low voice, quite unusual to her.