ndicative of those washed-out,
yellow-haired women's intelligence. To be harboring romantic notions
about Manuel seemed to Manuel's wife so fantastically out of reason that
she half wished the poor creature could without scandal be afforded a
chance to find out for herself all about Manuel's thousand and one
finicky ways and what he was in general to live with.

That being impossible, Niafer put the crazy woman out of mind, and began
to tell Manuel about what had happened, and not for the first time
either, while he was away, and about just how much more she was going to
stand from Sister Math, and about the advantages of a perfectly plain
understanding for everybody concerned. And with Niafer that was the end
of Count Manuel's discharging of his obligation to Alianora.

Of course there were gossips who said this, that and the other. Some
asserted that Manuel's tale in itself contained elements of
improbability: others declared that Queen Alianora, who was far deeplier
versed in the magic of the Apsarasas than was Dom Manuel, could just as
well have summoned the stork without his assistance. It was true the
stork was under no especial obligations to Alianora: even so, said these
gossips, it would have looked far better, and a queen could not be too
particular, and it simply showed you about these foreign Southern women;
and although they of course wished to misjudge no one, there was no
sense in pretending to ignore what everybody practically knew to be a
fact, and was talking about everywhere, and some day you would see for
yourself.

But after all, Dom Manuel and the Queen were the only persons qualified
to speak of these matters with authority, and this was Dom Manuel's
account of them. For the rest, he was sustained against tittle-tattle by
the knowledge that he had performed a charitable deed in England, for
the Queen's popularity was enhanced, and all the English, but
particularly their King, were delighted, by the fine son which the stork
duly brought to Alianora the following June.

Manuel never saw this boy, who afterward ruled over England and was a
highly thought-of warrior, nor did Dom Manuel ever see Queen Alianora
any more. So Alianora goes out of the story, to bring long years of
misery and ruining wars upon the English, and to Dom Manuel no more
beguilements. For they say Dom Manuel could never resist her, because of
that underlying poverty in the correct emotions which, as some say, Dom
Manuel share