Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/337

 "Your Majesty is very good. Your Majesty pardons me? I have abused your Majesty's kindness. You understand, I have nobody to speak to."

"I understand very well, M. Struboff. I am very sorry. Be kind to her and she will change toward you."

He shook his head ponderously.

"She won't change," he said, and stood shuffling his feet as he waited to be dismissed. I gave him my hand. (O Coralie, you and your bread! I understood.)

"She'll get accustomed to you," I murmured, with a reminiscence of William Adolphus.

"I think she hates me more every day." He bowed over my hand, and backed out with clumsy ceremony.

I flung myself on the sofa. Was not the burlesque well conceived and deftly fashioned? True, I did not seem to myself much like Struboff. There was no comfort in that; Struboff did not seem to himself much like what he was. "Am I repulsive, am I loathsome?" he cried indignantly, and my diplomacy could answer only, "What a question, my dear M. Struboff!" If I cried out, asking whether I were so unattractive that my bride must shrink from me, a thousand shocked voices would answer in like manner, "Oh, sire, what a question!"

Later in the day I called on Coralie and found her alone. Speaking as though from my own observation, I taxed her roundly with her coldness to Struboff and with allowing him to perceive her distaste for him. I instanced the matter of the bread, declaring that I had noticed it when I breakfasted with them. Coralie began to laugh.

"Do I do that? Well, perhaps I do. You've