The prince sprang to his feet, and faced his visitor with a look of amazement.
“Sir John’s son! Never!” he gasped.
“Yes. Strange how such unexpected events occur, isn’t it?” Brooker observed, slowly, with emphasis.
“But, my dear fellow, you can’t allow it. You must not!” he cried wildly.
“I’ve already told her that marriage is entirely out of the question. Yet she will not heed me,” her father observed, twirling the moustaches which he kept as well trained now as in the days when he rode at the head of his troop on Hounslow Heath, and was the pet of certain London drawing-rooms.
“Then take her abroad, so that they cannot meet. Come to Nice in December.”
“I am to bring her, so that you may endeavour to take George Stratfield’s place in her heart—eh?” observed the Captain shrewdly.
“Marriage with George Stratfield is agreed between us both to be impossible, whereas marriage with me is not improbable,” was the reply.
Erle Brooker shrugged his shoulders as he again puffed vigorously at his cigar. He now saw plainly Zertho’s object in asking him to call.
“Well,” continued his friend, “even I, with all my faults, am preferable to any Stratfield as Liane’s husband, am I not?”