Page:T.M. Royal Highness.djvu/345

Rh type and in glowing words its satisfaction thereat, and welcoming Spoelmann's daughter to the Court—the important evening was already close at hand, and before tongues could get fairly wagging the whole thing was a completed reality.

Never had more envy attached to thefive hundred favoured ones whose names stood on the Court Ball list, never had the bourgeois more eagerly devoured the account in the Courier—those dazzling columns which were written every year by a nobleman who had degenerated through drink, and which were such glorious reading that one felt they gave one a peep into Fairyland, while as a matter of fact the ball in the Old Schloss went off quite modestly and soberly. But the report only extended to the supper, including the French menu, and everything that came later, especially all the delicate significance of the great occasion, were necessarily left to be reported by word of mouth.

The ladies, in a huge olive-coloured motor, had pulled up in front of the Albrechtstor at the Old Schloss fairly punctually, though not so punctually that Herr von Bühl zu Bühl had not had time to get anxious. From a quarter-past seven onwards he had waited in full uniform, covered with orders down to his waist, with a bright brown toupee and his gold pince-nez on his nose, in the middle of the armour-hung Knights' Hall where the Grand Ducal family and the chief officials were collected; standing now on one foot, then on the other, and every now and then dispatching a footman to the ballroom to find out whether Miss Spoelmann had not yet come. He thought of all sorts of unheard-of possibilities. If this Queen of Sheba came too late—and what might one not expect of a girl who had walked right through the guard?—the entry of the Grand Ducal cortege would have to be delayed, and the Court would have to wait for her, for she simply must be introduced first, and it was out of the question that she should enter the ballroom after the Grand Duke.