"Oh, I think she would never mention it," said the Grand Duke, revolving in his mind this novel idea. "She has a great regard for appearances."
"She will be Regent"--and the Grand Duke chuckled. "I can see her now,--St. Elizabeth, with a dash of Boadicea. Noumaria will be a pantheon of the virtues, and my children will be reared on moral aphorisms and rational food, with me as a handy example of everything they should avoid. Deuce take it, Amalia," he added, "a father must in common decency furnish an example to his children!"
"Pray," asked the Baroness, "do you owe it to your children, then, to take this trip to Vienna--"
"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, "I owe that to myself."
"--and thereby break the Grand Duchess' heart?"
"Indeed," observed his Highness, "you appear strangely deep in the confidence of my wife."
Again the Baroness descended to aphorism. "All women are alike, your Highness."
"Ah, ah! Well, I have heard," said the Grand Duke, "that seven devils were cast out of Magdalene--"
"I have never heard of this being done to any other woman. Accordingly I deduce that in all other women must remain--"
"Beware, your Highness, of the crudeness of cynicism!"
"I age," complained the Grand Duke, "and one reaches years of indiscretion so early in the forties."
"You admit, then, discretion is desirable?"
"I admit that," his Highness said, with firmness, "of you alone."
"Am I, in truth," queried the Baroness, "desirable?" And in this patch of moonlight she looked incredibly so.
"More than that," said the Grand Duke--"you are dangerous. You are a menace to the peace of my Court. The young men make sonnets to your eyes, and the ladies are ready to tear them out. You corrupt us, one and all. There is de Châteauroux now--"
"I assure you," protested the Baroness, "Monsieur de Châteauroux is not the sort of person--"
"But at twenty-five," the Grand Duke interrupted, "one is invariably that sort of person."
"Phrases or not, it is decided. You shall make no more bad poets."
"You will," said the Baroness, "put me to a vast expense for curl-papers."
"You condemn me to an exile's life of misery!"
"Well, then, since misery loves company, I will go with you. For we should never forget," his Highness added, with considerable kindliness, "always to temper justice with mercy. So I have ordered a carriage to be ready at dawn."