Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/289

 "I think I won't expose myself to your fire again," said I. "It was careless last time; it would be downright folly now."

"Then we are to say no more about it?" he asked gravely.

"Not a word. Tell me, how came you to know that Coralie loves her impresario? You told Varvilliers so."

His lips twitched for a moment, but he answered, smiling:

"Because she has married him."

"I heard something of ambition in the case, of her career demanding the sacrifice."

"A slander, sire, depend on it. It is said in envy of her good fortune."

"Come, come, you love the Baroness so much, that you must have all the world in love."

"Indeed I can think of nobody more in love than I am."

"Think of me, Wetter."

"As though your Majesty could ever be absent from my thoughts," said he with a bow, a wave of his cigarette, and a smile.

I laughed outright in sheer enjoyment of his sword-play.

"And since we parted where have you been?" I asked.

"I have walked through hell, in such company as the place afforded," he answered, with a shrug that spoke ill for hell's resources.

"And you've come out the other side?"

"Is there another side?"

"Then you're still there?"

"Upon my word I don't know. It's so like other places except that I picked up money there."