“Ah! You’re going to lecture me!” she exclaimed with another pout. “I suppose I ought never to dance at all—eh? It’s wicked in your eyes, isn’t it? You are perhaps, one of those exemplary people that I heard so much of when in England—such an expressive name—the Kill-joys!”
“No, Your Highness,” I protested. “I really don’t think I’m a killjoy. If I were, I couldn’t very well be a diplomat. I—”
“But all diplomats are trained liars,” she asserted with abrupt frankness. “The Emperor told me so only the other day. He said they were men one should never trust.”
“I admit that, without the lie artistique, diplomacy would really be non-existent,” I said, with a laugh. “But is not the whole political world everywhere in Europe a world of vain promise, intrigue and shame?”
“Just as our social world seems to me,” she admitted.
“Ah! Then you are beginning to realise the hollow unreality of the world about you—eh?” I said.
“Dear me!” she exclaimed, “you talk just like a bishop! I really don’t know what has come to my dear old Uncle Colin. You must be ill, or something. You never used to be like this,” she added, with a sigh and a well-feigned look of regret that was really most amusing, while at the same time she made eyes at me.
Truly, she was a most charming little madcap, this Imperial Grand Duchess—the most charming in all Europe, as the diplomatic circle had long ago agreed.
So she had taken revenge upon me for uttering words of wisdom by telling people that I had flirted with and kissed her! She herself was responsible for the chatter which had gone round, with many embellishments, concerning myself, and how deeply I was in love with her. I wondered if it had reached the Emperor’s ears?
I felt annoyed, I here confess. And yet so sweet and irresponsible was she, so intelligent and quick at repartee, that next moment I had forgiven her.