The Great ImpersonationOppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
General
The Great Impersonation
Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Spy stories
“Am I!” Dominey replied gloomily. “First of all, she may do a lot of
mischief before she goes. And then, supposing by any thousand to one
chance the story of this cousin of Schmidt's should be true, and she
should find Dominey out there, still alive? The Princess is not of
German birth, you know. She cares nothing for Germany's future. As
a matter of fact, I think, like a great many Hungarians, she prefers
England. They say that an Englishman has as many lives as a cat.
Supposing that chap Dominey did come to life again and she brings him
home? You say yourself that you do not mean to make much use of me until
after the war has started. In the parlance of this country of idioms,
that will rather upset the apple cart, will it not?”
“Has the Princess a suite of rooms here?” Seaman enquired.
“Over in the west wing. Good idea! You go and see what you can do with
her. She will not think of going to bed at this time of night.”
Seaman nodded.
“Leave it to me,” he directed. “You go out and play the host.”
Dominey played the host first and then the husband. Rosamund welcomed
him with a little cry of pleasure.
“I have been enjoying myself so much, Everard!” she exclaimed.
“Everybody has been so kind, and Mr. Mangan has taught me a new
Patience.”
“And now, I think,” Doctor Harrison intervened a little gruffly, “it's
time to knock off for the evening.”
She turned very sweetly to Everard.
“Will you take me upstairs?” she begged. “I have been hoping so much
that you would come before Doctor Harrison sent me off.”
“I should have been very disappointed if I had been too late,” Dominey
assured her. “Now say good night to everybody.”
“Why, you talk to me as though I were a child,” she laughed. “Well,
good-bye, everybody, then. You see, my stern husband is taking me off.
When are you coming to see me, Doctor Harrison?”
“Nothing to see you for,” was the gruff reply. “You are as well as any
woman here.”
“Just a little unsympathetic, isn't he?” she complained to Dominey.
“Please take me through the hall, so that I can say good-bye to every
one else. Is the Princess Eiderstrom there?”
“I am afraid that she has gone to bed,” Dominey answered, as they passed
out of the room. “She said something about a headache.”
“She is very beautiful,” Rosamund said wistfully. “I wish she looked as
though she liked me a little more. Is she very fond of you, Everard?”
“I think that I am rather in her bad books just at present,” Dominey
confessed.
“I wonder! I am very observant, and I have seen her looking at you
sometimes--Of course,” Rosamund went on, “as I am not really your wife
and you are not really my husband, it is very stupid of me to feel
jealous, isn't it, Everard?”
“Not a bit,” he answered. “If I am not your husband, I will not be
anybody else's.”
“I love you to say that,” she admitted, with a little sigh, “but it
seems wrong somewhere. Look how cross the Duchess looks! Some one must
have played the wrong card.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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