'But your German prince and papa-in-law shall be free of the Club for
the next fortnight,' said he, and cordially asked to have the date of
the marriage. My face astonished him. He excused himself for speaking of
this happy event so abruptly. A sting of downright anger drove me back
at a rapid canter. It flashed on me that this Prince Ernest, whose
suave fashion of depressing me, and philosophical skill in managing his
daughter, had induced me to regard him as a pattern of astuteness, was
really both credulous and feeble, or else supremely unsuspecting: and I
was confirmed in the latter idea on hearing that he had sailed to visit
the opposite harbour and docks on board my father's yacht. Janet shared
my secret opinion.

'The prince is a gentleman,' she said.

Her wrath and disgust were unspeakable. My aunt Dorothy blamed her for
overdue severity. 'The prince, I suppose, goes of his own free will
where he pleases.'

Janet burst out, 'Oh! can't you see through it, aunty? The prince goes
about without at all knowing that the person who takes him--Harry sees
it--is making him compromise himself: and by-and-by the prince will
discover that he has no will of his own, whatever he may wish to resolve
upon doing.'

'Is he quite against Harry?' asked my aunt Dorothy.

'Dear aunty, he 's a prince, and a proud man. He will never in his
lifetime consent to... to what you mean, without being hounded into it.
I haven't the slightest idea whether anything will force him. I know
that the princess would have too much pride to submit, even to save her
name. But it 's her name that 's in danger. Think of the scandal to
a sovereign princess! I know the signification of that now; I used to
laugh at Harry's "sovereign princess." She is one, and thorough! there
is no one like her. Don't you understand, aunty, that the intrigue,
plot--I don't choose to be nice upon terms--may be perfectly successful,
and do good to nobody. The prince may be tricked; the princess, I am
sure, will not.'

Janet's affectation of an intimate and peculiar knowledge of the
princess was a show of her character that I was accustomed to: still, it
was evident they had conversed much, and perhaps intimately. I led her
to tell me that the princess had expressed no views upon my father. 'He
does not come within her scope, Harry.' 'Scope' was one of Janet's new
words, wherewith she would now and then fall to seasoning a serviceable
but savourless outworn vocabulary