"You are like the prince in
Shakespeare who was transformed by becoming king. But I'm forgetting you
are King, sire."
"I ask you to speak nothing but what your heart tells you--and to call
me nothing but my name."
She looked at me for a moment.
"Then I'm glad and proud, Rudolf," said she. "Why, as I told you, your
very face is changed."
I acknowledged the compliment, but I disliked the topic; so I said:
"My brother is back, I hear. He made an excursion, didn't he?"
"Yes, he is here," she said, frowning a little.
"He can't stay long from Strelsau, it seems," I observed, smiling.
"Well, we are all glad to see him. The nearer he is, the better."
The princess glanced at me with a gleam of amusement in her eyes.
"Why, cousin? Is it that you can--?"
"See better what he's doing? Perhaps," said I. "And why are you glad?"
"I didn't say I was glad," she answered.
"Some people say so for you."
"There are many insolent people," she said, with delightful haughtiness.
"Possibly you mean that I am one?"
"Your Majesty could not be," she said, curtseying in feigned deference,
but adding, mischievously, after a pause: "Unless, that is--"
"Well, unless what?"
"Unless you tell me that I mind a snap of my fingers where the Duke of
Strelsau is.
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