Yes, the little princess was none too engaging, she reflected, and her poor sacrificed child if not actually trapped....
The silken swish of a fan, breaking the silence, induced the Queen to look up.
In waiting at present was the Countess Olivia d’Omptyda, a person of both excellent principles and birth, if lacking, somewhat, in social boldness. Whenever she entered the royal presence she would begin visibly to tremble, which considerably flattered the Queen. Her Father, Count “Freddie” d’Omptyda, an infantile and charming old man, appointed in a moment of unusual vagary Pisuergan Ambassador to the Court of St James’, had lately married a child wife scarcely turned thirteen, whose frivolity, and numerous pranks on the high dames of London, were already the scandal of the _Corps Diplomatique_.
“Sssh! Noise is the last vulgarity,” the Queen commented, raising a cushion embroidered with raging lions and white uncanny unicorns higher behind her head.
Unstrung from the numerous _fêtes_, she had retired to a distant boudoir to relax, and, having partly disrobed, was feeling remotely Venus of Miloey with her arms half-hidden in a plain white cape.
“In this Age of push and shriek ...” she said and sighed.
“It seems that neither King Geo, nor Queen Glory, _ever_ lie down of a day!” her Dreaminess declared.
“Since his last appointment, neither does Papa.”
“The affair of your step-mother and Lady Diana Duff Semour,” the Queen remarked, “appears to be assuming the proportions of an Incident!”
The Countess dismally smiled. The subject of her step-mother, mistaken frequently for her grand-daughter, was a painful one: “I hear she’s like a colt broke loose!” she murmured, dropping her eyes fearfully to her costume.
She was wearing an apron of Parma-violets, and the Order of the Holy Ghost.
“It’s a little a pity she can’t be more sensible,” the Queen returned, fingering listlessly some papers at her side. Among them was the _Archæological Society’s_ initial report relating to the recent finds among the Ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. From Chedorlahomor came the good news that an _amphora_ had been found, from which it seemed that men, in those days, rode sideways, and women straddle-legs, with their heads to the horses’ tails, while a dainty cup, ravished from a rock-tomb in the Vale of Akko, ornamented with naked boys and goblets of flowers, encouraged a yet more extensive research.