"And I don't think I can go to Strelsau.My dear Rose, would it be--suitable?""Oh, nobody remembers that horrid old story now."Upon this, I took out of my pocket a portrait of the King of Ruritania.It had been taken a month or two before he ascended the throne.She could not miss my point when I said, putting it into her hands:
"In case you've not seen, or not noticed, a picture of Rudolf V, there he is.Don't you think they might recall the story, if Iappeared at the Court of Ruritania?"
My sister-in-law looked at the portrait, and then at me.
"Good gracious!" she said, and flung the photograph down on the table.
"What do you say, Bob?" I asked.
Burlesdon got up, went to a corner of the room, and searched in a heap of newspapers.Presently he came back with a copy of the Illustrated London News.Opening the paper, he displayed a double-page engraving of the Coronation of Rudolf V at Strelsau.
The photograph and the picture he laid side by side.I sat at the table fronting them; and, as I looked, I grew absorbed.
My eye travelled from my own portrait to Sapt, to Strakencz, to the rich robes of the Cardinal, to Black Michael's face, to the stately figure of the princess by his side.Long I looked and eagerly.
I was roused by my brother's hand on my shoulder.He was gazing down at me with a puzzled expression.
"It's 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.
"It's just an excuse," she said pettishly."You don't want to do anything.Why, you might become an ambassador!""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.
"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 picture's very like the photograph, but--""Well?"
"It's more like you!" said my brother.
My brother is a good man and true--so 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 don't think it's so much like me as the photograph,"said I boldly."But, anyhow, Bob, I won't go to Strelsau.""No, don't 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 Inever 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.
