She was wearing emeralds, on her snow-white skin, and leaning forward gazing fixedly down into the auditorium, as a crystal-gazer into a crystal. Heaven knows if she saw all those little facets of faces and plastrons. As for me, I knew that, like a sansculotte, I should never be king till breeches were off.
"I had terrible work to make him marry me," she said, in her swift, clear low tones.
"Why?"
"He was frightfully in love with me. He is! But he thinks he's unlucky..."
"Unlucky, how? In cards or in love?" I mocked.
"In both," she said briefly, with sudden cold resentment at my flippancy. There was over her eyes a glaze of fear. "It's in their family."
"What did you say to him?" I asked, rather laboured, feeling the dead weight.
"I promised to have luck for two," she said. "And war was declared a fortnight later."
"Ah, well!" I said. "That's the world's luck, not yours."
"Quite!" she said.