United States or United States Minor Outlying Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


And she laughed mischievously as she cast a glance at me, and tossed her head at her sister's reproving face. "Many a man has cursed their red hair before now," muttered the old lady and I remembered James, fifth Earl of Burlesdon. "But never a woman!" cried the girl. "Ay, and women, when it was too late," was the stern answer, reducing the girl to silence and blushes. "How comes the King here?"

When I returned empty-handed, Rose was so occupied in triumphing over Burlesdon that she let me down quite easily, devoting the greater part of her reproaches to my failure to advertise my friends of my whereabouts. "We've wasted a lot of time trying to find you," she said. "I know you have," said I. "Half our ambassadors have led weary lives on my account. George Featherly told me so.

And that shows how little we know what the future holds; for here I am, fulfilling my qualified promise, and writing, as I never thought to write, a book though it will hardly serve as an introduction to political life, and has not a jot to do with the Tyrol. Neither would it, I fear, please Lady Burlesdon, if I were to submit it to her critical eye a step which I have no intention of taking.

Well then and I must premise that I am going, perforce, to rake up the very scandal which my dear Lady Burlesdon wishes forgotten in the year 1733, George II. sitting then on the throne, peace reigning for the moment, and the King and the Prince of Wales being not yet at loggerheads, there came on a visit to the English Court a certain prince, who was afterwards known to history as Rudolf the Third of Ruritania.

The ordinary ambitions and aims of men in my position seem to me dull and unattractive. I have little fancy for the whirl of society, and none for the jostle of politics. Lady Burlesdon utterly despairs of me; my neighbours think me an indolent, dreamy, unsociable fellow.

"Then we are all brethren of the sword," answered Tarlenheim, holding out his hand, which I took readily. "Rassendyll, Rassendyll!" muttered Colonel Sapt; then a gleam of intelligence flitted across his face. "By Heaven!" he cried, "you're of the Burlesdons?" "My brother is now Lord Burlesdon," said I. "Thy head betrayeth thee," he chuckled, pointing to my uncovered poll.

The nobleman was not wounded in the duel; but the morning being raw and damp on the occasion of the meeting, he contracted a severe chill, and, failing to throw it off, he died some six months after the departure of Prince Rudolf, without having found leisure to adjust his relations with his wife who, after another two months, bore an heir to the title and estates of the family of Burlesdon.

This lady was the Countess Amelia, whose picture my sister-in-law wished to remove from the drawing-room in Park Lane; and her husband was James, fifth Earl of Burlesdon and twenty-second Baron Rassendyll, both in the peerage of England, and a Knight of the Garter.

"I don't think I want to be an ambassador," said I. "It's more than you ever will be," she retorted. That is very likely true, but it is not more than I have been. The idea of being an ambassador could scarcely dazzle me. I had been a king! So pretty Rose left us in dudgeon; and Burlesdon, lighting a cigarette, looked at me still with that curious gaze. "That picture in the paper " he said.

That night James, the servant, took leave of his dead master and of us. He carried to England by word of mouth for we dared write nothing down the truth concerning the King of Ruritania and Mr. Rassendyll. It was to be told to the Earl of Burlesdon, Rudolf's brother, under a pledge of secrecy; and to this day the earl is the only man besides ourselves who knows the story.