"I imagine his Highness may be aware that such is the case."
"Will you, sir, then, in your courtesy, constitute yourself the bearer of my reply?"
"I am your servant, sir; I shall deem it an honour to do so."
"Sir, you place me in your debt. And, such being the case, will you please to tell the Prince, your master, that I look forward with eagerness to my supper to-night, to which I shall proceed without fail; also that my health is most excellent, as are both my appetite and digestion; and, likewise, that when I require a doctor's advice I shall not insult so illustrious a person as the Prince by asking him to take so humble a function as that on himself? Sir, I salute you."
Whereon, with the exchange of most polite bows between us, I strode away, leaving him alone.
CHAPTER III
DANGER CLOSE AT HAND
By now it was half after one o'clock, and I, leaning out of my salon window in the Lion d'Or, knew that it was time for me to be away; to reach Damaris—"my Damaris" I called her now, since I had resolved that mine she had got to be—and see what sort of a supper she proposed to offer me. For my part, I thought the dishes were as like as not to consist of some unwholesome cold steel, or a leaden bullet out of a Spanish trabuco or musquetoon—that is to say, offered but not accepted, if I was to have any word in the matter.
Dallying idly over the window-sill, I thought, I say, of all this, while at the same time there rose ever before me the beauteous features and the laughing eyes of the Princess. And I wondered if she would laugh if she heard the clash of arms outside her side-door in the Rue des Fleurs. Likewise, I wondered if she would laugh, too, when she learnt, after this pleasing little entertainment of the small hours was over, of how masterful an individual I could be—it was her own term, you will please to remember; her very own!—and how I was the sort of man who would know how to turn this "playing" at being her lover into being her lover in true and actual fact. Poor Damaris! Poor, stately, yet roguish Damaris, what a come-down it would seem to her!—to give up her great position to become my wife.