“You will forgive an old and ailing man, my dear Mr. Morton, for making the most of his privileges as such. I trust my request to have you call has not inconvenienced you?”
“Not at all, Excellency; I was glad to come.”
“Thank you. It may not be considerate of me to ask you here--but I believe you won’t mind the limited space and closed portholes. I imagine your camp life has accustomed you to a great extent to discomfort and heat. What I want to say to you demands privacy.”
He paused and continued. “Mr. Morton, I beg you to permit me to approach what I wish to say in my own way, even if it may seem odd and unwarranted to you.”
“Go ahead, Your Excellency, I am listening.”
The older man leaned back and pushed a box of cigars toward his visitor. “Won’t you take one? I think you will like the flavor.”
His voice, until now somewhat strained, had become calm, and with an assumed nonchalance of manner, he added:
“I was told by the steward, Mr. Morton, that you had received considerable mail and some cables upon our arrival here. Does the receipt of these in any way alter your plans, which you were so good as to intimate to me the other evening? Pardon the question, but it is necessary that I should know in view of what I wish to say.”
“It does, Your Excellency. My letters from home are of little moment, but a cable, sent some two days ago, I think, tells me that my father’s health is not satisfactory and asks my quick return.”
“Ah, that makes it more difficult, then, for me to speak of what lies close to my heart, my dear sir. But necessity knows no law and I am in the position of a man who has no choice. Mr. Morton, I beg you to let me say a few words to you, in the hope that you will grant me your attention and--if possible, sympathy.”
Morton nodded and, reaching for the cigars, selected one at random and carefully lit it. “Very fine aroma indeed, Count; I haven’t had as good a smoke as this in many a day. Please begin; I am all attention.”
The Count nodded and began: “More than twenty-five years ago my king, then a young and little known prince of the Coburg family, was called to the throne of Roumelia by the vote of its people. Among the younger men whom he asked to join him in this new country to aid him in establishing a good government, I was one. I was a young Army officer at the time, with little ambition and with scarcely any diplomatic experience. I settled down in the new country. I was very enthusiastic, a prerogative of youth the world over, and became very much enamored with my work. Since then I have been very closely bound up with the fortunes of Roumelia and those of my king. I was one of the few of my Prince’s Court who succeeded in gaining the confidence of the Roumelians. I acquired their language and customs thoroughly. I succeeded in gaining the friendship of some of the leading men of all parties. I won the respect and I think even the love and perhaps the admiration of the Court by my loyalty to the cause of the country, my devotion to my duties, my work and my fidelity to the interests of the principality and later the kingdom, the creation and growth of which, I may be permitted to say, may be due, in a small measure, to my efforts.