It was told that, in the past, her life had been a gallant one, although her adventures, it was believed, had been mostly with men. Those however, who had observed her conduct closely, had not failed to remark how often her eyes had been attracted in the course of the evening towards the dimpled cheeks of the British Ambassadress.
Perceiving her ample form not far away, Queen Thleeanouhee signalled to her amiably to approach.
_Née_ Rosa Bark (and a daughter of the Poet) Lady Something was perhaps not sufficiently tactful to meet all the difficulties of the rôle in which it had pleased life to call her. But still, she tried, and did do her best, which often went far to retrieve her lack of _savoir faire_. “Life is like that, dear,” she would sometimes say to Sir Somebody, but she would never say what it was that life was like. ‘_That_,’ it seemed....
“I was just looking for my daughter,” she declared.
“And is she as sympathetic,” Queen Thleeanouhee softly asked, “as her mamma?”
“She’s shy--of the Violet persuasion, but that’s not a bad thing in a young girl.”
“Where _I_ reign, shyness is a quality which is entirely unknown...!”
“It must be astonishing, ma’am,” Lady Something replied, caressing a parure of false jewels, intended, indeed, to deceive no one, “to be a Queen of a sun-steeped country like yours.”
“Dateland--my dear, it’s a scorch!” she averred.
“I conclude, ma’am, it’s what _we_ should call ‘conservatory’ scenery?” Lady Something murmured.
“It is the land of the jessamine-flower, the little amorous jessamine-flower,” the Queen gently cooed with a sidelong smiling glance, “that twines itself sometimes to the right-hand, at others to the left, just according to its caprices!”
“It sounds I fear to be unhealthy, ma’am.”
“And it is the land also, of romance, my dear, where _shyness_ is a quality which is entirely unknown,” the Queen broke off, as one of her ladies, bearing a _darbouka_, advanced with an air of purposefulness towards her.
The hum of voices which filled the room might well have tended to dismay a vocalist of modest powers, but the young matron known to the Court as ‘Tropical Molly,’ and whom her mistress addressed as Timzra, soon shewed herself to be equal to the occasion.