“I’m sure it’s awfully kind of you, Prince,” the girl replied with some confusion. “I—well, I don’t know what to say. Father and mother are out.”
“Ah!” he laughed; “and of course you cannot come with me alone. It is against your English ideas of les convenances—eh?”
She laughed in chorus, afterwards saying:
“I expect them back in half an hour.”
“Oh, then, I’ll wait,” he exclaimed, and taking off his motor-coat, he seated himself in a chair and began to chat with her, asking what sights of Brussels she had seen, at the same time being filled with admiration at her fresh sweetness and chic. They were alone in the room, and he found an indescribable charm in her almost childlike face and girlish chatter. She was so unlike the artificial women of cosmopolitan society who were his friends.
Yes. He was deeply in love with her, and by her manner towards him he could not fail to notice that his affection was reciprocated.
Presently her parents appeared. They had noticed the big cream-coloured car with the chauffeur standing outside, and at once a flutter had run through both their hearts, knowing that the august visitor had arrived to call upon them.
Northover was full of apologies, but the Prince cut them short, and within a quarter of an hour they were all in the car and on the road to that goal of every British tourist, the battlefield of Waterloo. The autumn afternoon was perfect. The leaves had scarcely begun to turn, and the sun so hot that it might still have been August.
Nellie’s father was just as proud of the Prince’s acquaintance as she was herself, while Mrs Northover was filled with pleasurable anticipations of going back to quiet, old-world Stamford—a place where nothing ever happens—and referring, in the hearing of her own tea-drinking circle, to “my friend Prince Albert.”
A week passed. Mr and Mrs Northover could not fail to notice how constantly the Prince was in Nellie’s society.