Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/119

 The Countess broke her wilful silence, but did not change the direction of her eyes.

"If Toté were of the proper station," she said ironically, "she'd be just right for you by the time you're both grown up."

"And you'd be mother-in-law?" "I should be too old to plague you. I should just sit in my corner in the sun."

"The sun is always in your corner."

"Don't be so complimentary," she said with a sudden twitching of her lips. "I shall have to stand up and curtsey, and I don't want to. Besides, you oughtn't to know how to say things like that, ought you, Cæsar?"

Cæsar was my—shall I say—pet-name? used when we were alone or with Count Max, only in a playful satire.

A silence followed for some time. At last she glanced toward me.

"Not gone yet?" said she, raising her brows. "What will the Princess say?"

"I go when I please," said I, resenting the question as I was meant to resent it.

"Yes. Certainly not when I please."

Our eyes met now; suddenly she blushed, and then interposed the screen between herself and me. A glorious thrill of youthful triumph ran through me; she had paid her first tribute to my manhood in that blush; the offering was small, but, for its significance, frankincense and myrrh to me.

"I thought you came to talk about Wetter's Bill," she suggested presently in a voice lower than her usual tones.

"The deuce take Wetter's Bill," said I.