'
The door closed, and at the same moment I fell upon the brocaded
satin state bed and tore off my hat and gloves like one distraught.
"Hilda," I gasped, "you brought me here, and you must rescue me, for
I absolutely decline to drink tea with a duke."
"Nonsense, Penelope, don't be absurd," she replied. "I have never
happened to see him myself, and I am a trifle nervous, but it cannot
be very terrible, I should think."
"Not to you, perhaps, but to me impossible," I said. "I thought he
was in Homburg, or I would never have entered this place. It is not
that I fear nobility. I could meet Her Majesty the Queen at the
Court of St. James without the slightest flutter of embarrassment,
because I know I could trust her not to presume on my
defencelessness to enter into conversation with me. But this duke,
whose dukedom very likely dates back to the hour of the Norman
Conquest, is a very different person, and is to be met under very
different circumstances. He may ask me my politics. Of course I
can tell him that I am a Mugwump, but what if he asks me why I am a
Mugwump?"
"He will not," Hilda answered. "Englishmen are not wholly devoid of
feeling!"
"And how shall I address him?" I went on. "Does one call him 'your
Grace,' or 'your Royal Highness'? Oh for a thousandth-part of the
unblushing impertinence of that countrywoman of mine who called your
future king 'Tummy'! but she was a beauty, and I am not pretty
enough to be anything but discreetly well-mannered.
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