"Oh, the Bill! You were very cowardly, Cæsar."
"I could do nothing."
"You never can, it seems to me." She fixed on me eyes that she had made quite grave and invested with a critically discriminating regard. "But I'm very pleased to see you. Oh, and I forgot—of course I'm very much honoured too. I'm always forgetting what you are."
On an impulse of chagrin at the style of her reception, or of curiosity, or of bitterness, I spoke the thought of my mind.
"You never forget it for a moment," I said. "I forget it, not you."
She covered a start of surprise by a hasty and pretty little yawn, but her eyes were inquisitive, almost apprehensive. After a moment she picked up her old weapon, the firescreen, and hid her face from the eyes downward. But the eyes were set on me, and now, it seemed, in reproach.
"If you think that, I wonder you come at all," she murmured.
"I don't want you to forget it. But I'm something besides."
"Yes, a poor boy with a cruel mother—and a rude sister—and She sprang suddenly to her feet. "And," she went on, "a charming old adviser. Cæsar, I met Prince von Hammerfeldt. Shall I tell you what he said to me?"
"Yes."
"He bowed over my hand and kissed it and smiled, and twinkled with his old eyes, and then he said, 'Madame, I am growing vain of my influence over his Majesty.'"
"The Prince was complimenting you," I remarked, although I was not so dull as to miss
