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figure of the princess by his side. Long I looked and eagerly. I was roused by my brothers hand on my shoulder. He was gazing down at me with a puzzled expression. Its a remarkable likeness, you see, said I. I really think I had better not go to Ruritania. Rose, though half convinced, would not abandon her position. Its just an excuse, she said pettishly. You dont want to do anything. Why, you might become an ambassador! I dont think I want to be an ambassador, said I. Its 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. Well, what of it? It shows that the King of Ruritania and your humble servant are as like as two peas. My brother shook his head. I suppose so, he said. But I should know you from the man in the photograph. And not from the picture in the paper? I should know the photograph from the picture: the pictures very like the photograph, but Well? Its more like you! said my brother. My brother is a good man and trueso that, for all that he is a married man and mighty fond of his wife, he should know any secret of mine. But this secret was not mine, and I could not tell it to him. I dont think its so much like me as the photograph, said I boldly. But, anyhow, Bob, I wont go to Strelsau. No, dont go to Strelsau, Rudolf, said he. And whether he suspects anything, or has a glimmer of the truth, I do not know. If he has, he keeps it to himself, and he and I never refer to it. And we let Sir Jacob Borrodaile find another attache. Since all these events whose history I have set down happened I have lived a very quiet life at a small house which I have taken in the country. 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. Yet I am a young man; and sometimes I have a fancythe superstitious would call it a presentimentthat my part in life is not yet altogether played; that, somehow and some day, I shall mix again in great affairs, I shall again spin policies in a busy brain, match my wits against my enemies, brace my muscles to fight a good fight and strike stout blows. Such is the tissue of my thoughts as, with gun or rod in hand, I wander through the woods or by the side of the stream. Whether the fancy will be fulfilled, I cannot tellstill less whether the scene that, led by memory, I lay for my new exploits will be the true |
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