The next afternoon Sylvia sat in an arm-chair in the presence-room, which Henry supposed was so called because none of the furniture had been paid for, and waited for Godfrey Hurndale's coming. Her father put on the rusty black evening-dress of the family retainer, and Jimmy wore a most conspicuous check suit and talked so loudly and nasally that Henry was driven to a final protest: "Look here, Jimmy, I've dressed up to help this show in a suit that's as old as one of those infernal ancestors of Sil's, but if you don't get less American it'll fall to pieces. Every time you guess I can hear a seam give." "Remember to talk nothing but French," Monkley warned Sylvia, when the bell rang. "Go on, Harry. You've got to open the door. And don't forget that _you_ can only speak French." Monkley followed him out of the room, and his voice could be heard clanking about the hall as he invited young Hurndale into the dining-room first. Henry came back and took up his position behind Sylvia's chair; she felt very solemn and excited, and asked her father rather irritably why he was muttering. The reason, however, remained a mystery, for the dining-room door opened again and, heralded by Monkley's twanging invitation, Mr. Hurndale stood shyly in the entrance to the presence-room. "Go right in, Mr. Hurndale," Monkley said. "I guess his Majesty's just about ready to meet you." Sylvia, when she saw the young man bowing before her, really felt a kind of royal exaltation and held out her hand to be kissed. Hurndale reverently bent over it and touched it with his lips; so did the prince, an action for which Sylvia was unprepared and which she rather resented, thinking to herself that he really did not shave and that it had not only been his grubby appearance. Then Hurndale offered her a large bunch of white carnations and she became kingly again. "_François_," she commanded her father, "_mets ces oeillets dans ma chambre._" And when her father passed out with a bow Sylvia was indeed a king. The audience did not last long. There were practical matters to discuss, for which his Majesty was begged to excuse their withdrawal. Sylvia would have liked a longer ceremony. When the visitor had gone they all sat down to a big tea in the presence-room, and she was told that the young man had been so completely conquered by her gracious reception of him that he had promised to raise five hundred pounds for her cause. His reward in addition to royal favors was to be a high class of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. Everybody, even Henry, was in high good humor. The prince did not come to Streatham again; but a week later Monkley got a letter from him with the Paris postmark.