His Grace lifted his grizzled eyebrows in courteous interrogation, and beginning delicately to disentangle the gold strings of his pince-nez from the pectoral cross to which like a penitent it clung, said, "Of course I perfectly understand how great a shock this has been to you. To me also it comes as an entire surprise: my daughter has told me nothing, and therefore--in a sense--I can say nothing till I have seen her." "You have influence with her, I suppose?" said the Premier. "Oh, undoubtedly." "I am confident, then, that your Grace will use it to the right end." "It has never been my habit, I trust, to neglect my parental responsibilities," replied his Grace. "I was thinking, rather, of your responsibilities to the State." "Those, too, I shall have in mind. There is also the Church." The Prime Minister was puzzled. "This matter does not seem to impress your Grace quite as it does me. I should have thought there could be no two opinions about it." "That was too much to hope, surely? Our points of view are so very different." The Premier felt that plain dealing had become necessary. "It would make quite untenable your position as leader of a party," he remarked grimly. "I was not concerned about myself," replied his Grace with wonderful sweetness. "As for that, I am growing old." "But surely you agree that the thing is wholly impossible?" "Impossible is a strong word." "That it would profoundly alter the constitutional status of the Crown?" "Possibly. I think not." This slow weighing of cons in the balance was having a devastating effect upon the minister's nerves; he got upon his feet. "Does your Grace mean to tell me that this thing is even conceivable?" "Conceivable? I wish you would state to me, without any fear of offense, the whole body of your objection. I recognize, of course, that the Royal House, in the direct line, has made no such alliance for over two hundred years,--never, in fact, since it ceased to be of pure native extraction. I also admit that for myself as a party politician (if you impose upon me that term) it is inconvenient, destructive even to certain plans which I had formed. But putting myself altogether aside, and allowing that for a precedent we have to go very far back into the past, what real objections have you to urge?" The Prime Minister was beginning to get thoroughly uncomfortable. "It is a breach--a fatal breach to my mind," said he, "in that caste distinction which alone makes monarchy possible under modern conditions. I mean no personal disrespect to your Grace: were it a question of my own daughter, I should take the same view. It disturbs a tradition which has worked well and for safety, and has not been broken for hundreds of years. But most destructively of all it threatens that aloofness from all political entanglements--that absolute impartiality between party and party--which to-day constitutes the strength of the Crown."