“Well, I suppose even if they had the heavens wouldn’t have fallen,” she laughed.
“Ah!” I said, “you are really incorrigible. Here you are flirting with an unsuspected lover.”
“And why shouldn’t I?” she asked in protest. “Dick is better than some chance acquaintance.”
“If you are only amusing yourself,” I said. “But if you love him, then it would be a serious matter.”
“Oh, horribly serious, I know,” she said impatiently. “If I were a typist, or a shopgirl, or a waitress, or any girl who worked for her living, I should be doing quite the correct thing; but for me—born of the great Imperial Family—to merely look at a boy is quite unpardonable.”
I was silent for a few moments. The little madcap whom the Emperor had placed in my charge, because her presence at Court was a menace to the Imperial family, was surely unconventional and utterly incorrigible.
“I fear Your Highness does not fully appreciate the heavy responsibilities of Imperial birth,” I said in a tone of dissatisfaction.
“Oh, bother! My birth be hanged!” she exclaimed, with more force than politeness. “In these days it really counts for nothing. I was reading it all in a German book last week. Every class seems to have its own social laws, and what is forbidden to me is quite good form with my dressmaker. Isn’t it absurdly funny?”
“You must study your position.”
“Why should I, if I strictly preserve my incognito? That I do this, even you, Uncle Colin, will admit!”