“Oh everybody knows he’s wonderful.  Where is the great man?”

“In the next room.  Do you want him?”

“Good Lord, no.  You’ve not told me what you suppose I’ve come for.”

“I did.  I told you I couldn’t imagine.”

“It’s for a most saintly, really nice reason.  Guess.”

“I can’t guess.”

“Oh but try.”

Priscilla to her extreme disgust felt herself turning very red.  “I suppose to spy out the nakedness of the land,” she said severely.

“Now you’re picturesque again.  You must have been reading a tremendous lot lately.  Of course you would, with that learned old fossil about.  No my dear, I’ve come simply to see if you are happy.”

She looked at him, and her flush slowly died away.

“Simply to convince myself that you are happy.”

Her eyes filling with tears she thought it more expedient to fix them on the table-cloth.  She did fix them on it, and the golden fringe of eyelashes that he very rightly thought so beautiful lay in long dusky curves on her serious face.  “It’s extraordinarily nice of you if—­if it’s true,” she said.

“But it is true.  And if you are, if you tell me you are and I’m able to believe it, I bow myself out, dear cousin, and shall devote any energies I have left after doing that to going on muzzling your father.  He shall not, I promise you, in any way disturb you.  Haven’t I kept him well in hand up to this?”

She raised her eyes to his.  “Was it you keeping him so quiet?”

“It was, my dear.  He was very restive.  You’ve no notion of all the things he wanted to do.  It wanted a pretty strong hand, and a light one too, I can tell you.  But I was determined you should have your head.  That woman Disthal—­”

Priscilla started.

“You don’t like her?” inquired the Prince sympathetically.

“No.”

“I was afraid you couldn’t.  But I didn’t know how to manage that part.  She’s in London.”

Priscilla started again.  “I thought—­I thought she was in bed,” she said.

“She was, but she got out again.  Your—­departure cured her.”

“Didn’t you tell me nobody was round the corner?”

“Well, you don’t call London round the corner?  I wouldn’t let her come any nearer to you.  She’s waiting there quite quietly.”

“What is she waiting for?” asked Priscilla quickly.

“Come now, she’s your lady in waiting you know.  It seems natural enough she should wait, don’t it?”

“No,” said Priscilla, knitting her eyebrows.

“Don’t frown.  She had to come too.  She’s brought some of your women and a whole lot”—­he glanced at the blue serge suit and put his hand up to his moustache—­“a whole lot of clothes.”

“Clothes?” A wave of colour flooded her face.  She could not help it at the moment any more than a starving man can help looking eager when food is set before him.  “Oh,” she said, “I hope they’re the ones I was expecting from Paris?”