unheard of! mania!
mania!' he muttered. 'You are aware, sir, that you have been doing your
worst to destroy the settled arrangements of my family? What does it
mean? In common reason you cannot indulge any legitimate hope of
succeeding. Taking you as a foreigner, you must know that. Judge of the
case by your own reigning Families. Such events never happen amongst
them. Do you suppose that the possession of immense wealth entitles you
to the immeasurable presumption of aspiring to equality of position
with reigning Houses? Such folly is more frequently castigated
than reasoned with. Why, now--now, were it published--that I had
condescended--condescend as I am doing, I should be the laughing-stock of
every Court in Europe. You English want many lessons. You are taught by
your scribes to despise the dignity which is not supported by a multitude
of bayonets, guns, and gold. I heard of it when I travelled incognito.
You make merry over little potentates. Good. But do not cross their
paths. Their dominion may be circumscribed, but they have it; and where
we are now, my power equals that of the Kaiser and the Czar. You will do
me the favour to understand that I am not boasting, not menacing; I
attempt, since it is extraordinarily imposed on me, to instruct you. I
have cause to be offended; I waive it. I meet you on common ground, and
address myself to your good sense. Have you anything to say?'

'Much, sir.'

'Much?' he said, with affected incredulity.

The painful hardship for me was to reply in the vague terms he had been
pleased to use.

'I have much to say, your Highness. First, to ask pardon of you, without
excusing myself.'

'A condition, apparently, that absolves the necessity for the grant.
Speak precisely.'

But I was as careful as he in abstaining from any direct indication of
his daughter's complicity, and said, 'I have offended your Highness. You
have done me the honour to suggest that it is owing to my English
training. You will credit my assurance that the offence was not
intentional, not preconceived.'

'You charge it upon your having been trained among a nation of
shopkeepers?'

'My countrymen are not illiterate or unmannerly, your Highness.'

'I have not spoken it; I may add, I do not think it.'

'I feared that your Highness entertained what I find to be a very
general, perhaps here and there wilful, error with regard to England.'

'When I was in the service I had a comrade, a gallant gentleman,