ONE WOMAN'S DIPLOMACY.

There are men who though conspicuously in the world are never of it. Counsellor was one of these. He gave the impression of being a spectator; one who looked on at the play of common ambitions and intrigues with an amused and impersonal interest. He was drawn into no quarrels. Those who hated him most continued to shake hands with him, and none could accuse him of being a partisan. Yet he was rather truculent than meek, entirely ready to give his opinion, often with a surprising frankness, but maintaining throughout the complex relations of his life a superb reserve that formed a defence behind which neither favour nor enmity could penetrate.

He stayed on at RÉvonde, though the tsa continued to blow relentlessly. Affairs were yet in a chaotic condition and he lingered grumblingly at the club, declaring it was too cold to travel, and apparently finding his chief relaxation in privately deriding Rallywood for the favours which RÉvonde society was thrusting so lavishly upon him.

In the untiring whirl and tangle of court life and gaiety Rallywood lived and moved with a growing enjoyment that half surprised himself, and for which he accounted on the score of change from the dull drudgery of the frontier. His acceptance by the Guard had been thorough; even the colonel-in-chief, Count Sagan, whose strongest point was not courtesy, had given him a pronounced recognition. The pretty Countess demanded a good deal of his attention and attendance, and this fact brought down upon him some of Counsellor's most scathing jeers.

'Gallantries are in vogue, my boy, and you are qualifying for a high place amongst the MaÄsauns,' he said. 'She is a deuced pretty woman. I offer you my compliments.'

'She is pretty,' replied Rallywood, 'but there are a good many people in MaÄsau who think her handsomer than I do.'

'Yet you tell me that you are again on your way to her house this evening. Can't you get through the day without a glimpse of her?'

'Does it seem so bad as all that?' asked Rallywood reflectively. 'Yes, I suppose I like going there; yet as I have said before, there are a good many people who appreciate her more than I do.'

'Then what in the world takes you there?'

An odd expression grew slowly into the young man's face.

'Because of the other people, I suppose,' he repeated dreamily.

'As for instance?'

Rallywood woke up from his thoughts and shook himself.

'Unziar,' he returned with a grin.

Counsellor opened the stove and threw in the remnant of his cigar.

'Ah!' he commented significantly; 'and I presume Unziar goes there to meet you. I begin to see.'

Rallywood laughed.

'I'm hanged if I do! By the way, the Countess wants of all things to make a friend of you. She says the English are so reliable. But you are such an old bear the women can't get at you.'

'So much the better for me,' was the grim reply. 'Also I am sorry that I can't reciprocate the Countess's opinion of me. There are very few reliable women. If I had ever found one I might have married her.'

'That is a hard saying, Major. You've been unlucky. That's where it hurts with you!'

'No, I've no personal feeling in the matter. I share the opinion in common with many wise men. Let me refer you to Solomon, the census of whose harem warrants us in believing that what he didn't know about women wasn't worth knowing. Yet he records as his experience, "One man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all these have I not found."'

'I bet he didn't! You can't sample a delicate quality in the bulk,' retorted Rallywood, and was already at the door when an idea stopped him. 'Look here, Major; come with me and revise your verdict.'

To his surprise Counsellor stood up and asked one more question.

'Countess Isolde invited me?'

'Any number of times, as you know.'

'The more fool she,' growled Counsellor; 'I'll go.'

The cotillon, danced with its hundred absurdities, was as fashionable at RÉvonde as elsewhere. Counsellor, like a courtly bear, was induced to join in its whimsical vagaries.

The details of the cotillon obtaining at that period do not concern us here. It is sufficient to say that, as a result of some evolution, by chance or by choice Counsellor found himself with the Countess on a raised daÏs at one end of the room, while Mademoiselle Selpdorf and Rallywood formed the corresponding couple at the other end. Between them the dance proceeded, thus leaving the respective couples virtually isolated for a few minutes.

'It was delightful of you to come to our little party to-night,' the Countess was saying to her companion. 'Now that you have come to see me here, can I not induce you to come also to Sagan next week? We are going out there for a few days. Do think of it.'

'You are too kind, my dear madame, but an old man like myself may be out of place.'

The Countess sighed a little.

'Of course you are not at all old,' she said, shaking her head at him, 'though you are fond of playing the part. But if you want to be old you can be old in good company at the Castle, for the Duke will be there—you know he is a cousin of ours.'

Counsellor looked back into the smiling blue eyes. Most men would have succumbed to their innocent flattery. To the Major they only suggested an infinite capacity for foolishness.

'Don't you think we could exchange our Duke for another, a more interesting one?' she added, misled perhaps by his look. 'Duke Gustave is so wrapped up in his stupid gambling, and altogether there are many things——' her speech tailed off inconsequently into a confused silence.

'Wanting? Certainly! For example, we have no Duchess,' said Counsellor gallantly. 'We need a pretty Duchess. But is it not possible that MaÄsau may yet boast the most adorable Duchess in Europe?'

Countess Isolde started and flushed like a pleased child, and her eyes lit up as she laid her fan on Counsellor's stout knee with a confidential impulsive gesture.

'But England does not like the idea of pretty Duchesses?' she ventured reproachfully. 'And you are only a flatterer after all!'

The Major raised his bushy white eyebrows.

'Have I that reputation?'

'No, they say you are terribly frank;' then a design to sound this difficult and usually unapproachable diplomat came into her irrational head. Older men than he had been vanquished by her beauty ere now. 'England has not yet recognized my husband's claim as next heir,' she whispered. 'Major Counsellor, do you think your nation could ever be brought to recognize me as Duchess?'

'If the occasion arose,' answered the wily old soldier softly, 'I do not see—speaking as a man—how any request of yours could be refused. But I cannot answer for my nation. Still, if the occasion arose——' he hesitated as if searching for words, but in reality, waiting for his companion to take up the unfinished sentence.

The Countess trembled with excitement. This was indeed a triumph. She, 'silly Isolde,' as old Sagan was ever ready to call her, had gained a little bit of information they would give their ears to possess, but she would keep it and use it at her leisure. Meanwhile she must strike while the iron of old Counsellor's nature was yet hot.

'But the occasion will arise, believe me! Perhaps soon, at Sagan!' As she spoke she started violently, and her face turned white as Count Sagan stood before them.

'Do you feel inclined for a hand of whist, Counsellor?' he said abruptly, with a wrathful, questioning glance at his wife. 'Has my wife been boring you with her chatter?'

'On the contrary, Major Counsellor has promised to join us at the Castle next week,' exclaimed his wife.

Sagan's bloodshot eyes darkened. He had the guile of a plotter, but lacked something of the self-control. Counsellor, who appeared to be watching the dancers, turned upon this and added:

'And I have been thanking Madame de Sagan for the invitation.'

'Ah, I knew you wouldn't come! Well, you will lose nothing. We shall have a houseful of fools,' interrupted the Count roughly.

'I have already accepted, and will with your permission, Count, be one of the fools,' replied Counsellor genially.

The Countess understood she had in some way put her foot in it, but as the two men walked away together she nodded complacently to herself, with the words, 'I know what I know!'

The tide of dancers still swept backwards and forwards as Madame de Sagan idly observed them, until her glance chanced to fall upon the opposite couple at the further end of the saloon. Something in Valerie's air fixed her wandering attention at once with a little shock. What was Rallywood saying to her? And where was Anthony Unziar? The Countess Isolde had to the full the all-devouring vanity of her type, but now, for once in her life, she felt desirous of forwarding a love affair that was not her own.

'You are going to Sagan, of course?' Valerie had said to her partner as they stood together.

'I think not,' Rallywood replied.

'I thought you would be sure to be in attendance'—she glanced carelessly towards the daÏs where the Countess was at the moment laying her fan on Counsellor's knee—'as usual.'

'No, Unziar is the lucky man,' Rallywood answered without significance in his tone.

'Nonsense! Anthony is her cousin!' said the girl impatiently.

Rallywood's grey eyes were on her face.

'Whose cousin? What do you mean?' he asked innocently.

Valerie bit her lip. She hated this Englishman. Of all her acquaintances he alone, in his blundering way, was able to put her somehow at a disadvantage.

'When the Duke goes to Sagan,' she said, without noticing his question, 'the Count has the privilege as colonel-in-chief of the Guard, of inviting any two officers he pleases to act with the escort. So we shall see.'

'I wonder,' said Rallywood after a pause, 'where you get your impressions from, Mademoiselle?'

'I see—like other people. We all form our judgments on what we see and—know!'

'What do you know, for instance?'

'I heard of you when you were at Kofn Ford, near the Castle of Sagan,' she answered.

Rallywood was only human, and however moderately he may have returned Madame de Sagan's preference, he was fully aware of its existence. In those days on the frontier he had, rather from fastidiousness than principle perhaps, avoided her and her invitations whenever possible. But that was one thing; it was another to hear the matter coolly alluded to by the girl beside him. Involuntarily he drew a little away from her. His notions were founded less on actual knowledge and experience of women—for of that he had little—than gathered from that idealized version of the sex with which the right-minded male animal is usually furnished by his own mental and emotional processes. So far his intercourse with Isolde of Sagan had been limited to certain sentimental passages; the initiative lay with the lady, but Rallywood had once or twice been distinctly wrought upon by the appeals to his sympathy and pity. Now, however, looked at from a fresh standpoint, the one in fact from which Valerie viewed it, the subject became suddenly repellent, and he slid away from the discussion with another question.

'What has Unziar been saying of me? You have treated me differently since—that night.'

There appeared to be no need to particularize the night.

Mademoiselle Selpdorf understood both the first involuntary movement and the change of subject, and resented them equally.

'Anthony is generous, so generous!' she said with some warmth. 'I suppose it is an English trait to take everything and to give nothing in return. Anthony told me of all that took place in the Cloister of St. Anthony. Your action seemed to him so fine, poor fellow!—but not to me. You believed in your luck, of course, and took the hazard and won, leaving him hopelessly at a disadvantage. I should not have accepted the position as he did—I should have forced you to fight it out sooner or later! I had rather a hundred times have died by your bullet than lived to endure your triumph!'

Rallywood pondered this view of the matter before he spoke.

'I dare say you are right,' he said at last; 'at least, no woman could have been so generous to another woman as he was to me.'

'You are complimentary, Captain Rallywood!'

'I beg your pardon. I only meant that women are not generous as between themselves. Looked at from your point of view, I see that I was wrong about that affair with Unziar. But more than all, it proves he is a splendid fellow.'

Now Unziar's praise from Rallywood's lips displeased Mademoiselle Selpdorf almost more than all which had gone before.

'It is easy to say these things, but'—she rose eagerly—'at last that figure is ended. What a stupid interval it has been!' she added with a little smile.

'I am sorry. I always have the misfortune to bore you,' Rallywood said, accepting his snub meekly.

'Never mind! You can't help it!' she responded with a pleasant nod as she left him.

Rallywood remained standing where he was.

'A very nasty one indeed for me. I shouldn't wonder, though, if she forgave me for the sake of that last back-handed blow!' he reflected with some amusement.

Which proves that RÉvonde was teaching Rallywood something that has its own value at one period or another of a man's life. He was too poor to dream of marrying anyone, much less the daughter of the Chancellor of MaÄsau, a woman whose training and tastes had not been guided on the lines of simplicity or economy. That Valerie Selpdorf attracted him was a truth to which his eyes began to be opened at the moment when Counsellor asked him why he haunted Madame de Sagan's entertainments. Then it had struck him that the almost certain chance of meeting Valerie was his chief motive, yet he believed it was safe to divulge to himself, since the girl bitterly disliked him, and he, in the strength of the insular and Puritan side of his nature, disapproved of her. It was the pleasure of the hour, no one looked beyond that in RÉvonde, and Rallywood had fallen into the universal habit of drifting.

'You are thoughtful. What can you have been talking about?' asked the Countess, coming up.

'Mademoiselle Selpdorf has been giving her opinion of me. It is not flattering, and I am depressed,' returned Rallywood, hoping the Countess meant to talk of Valerie.

'Has she? She is often absurd in her ideas. But we need not talk of her. To turn to something pleasanter, do you know that I have just persuaded Major Counsellor to come to us at Sagan?'

Rallywood instantly perceived that the three or four days at the old frontier castle might prove to be a singularly interesting period, and regretted that he was not to be a guest also.

'And you are coming too, are you not?' went on Madame de Sagan, with a note in her voice that Rallywood was learning to dread.

'I fancy not. Unziar and Adiron have been mentioned.'

'Yes, Anthony Unziar, because he is my cousin, and for the sake of Valerie. Also Captain Colendorp. I do not like him, he is always black and sneering, but the Count chose him yesterday, and then I suggested yourself. They were rather doubtful about you, but Baron von Elmur consented. And I was so glad—Jack!'

The friendship had been progressing, it will be perceived, during the last three weeks. But Rallywood made no immediate response, being absorbed in digesting the information she had given him. That the German minister should be permitted to dictate the guests for the three days' festivities at the Castle was in itself a pregnant fact. But further, the Germans had never before possessed old Sagan's confidence; his dislike of the encroaching mammoth, whom the whole little nation feared, was notorious. This new departure was therefore ominous.

'I had no notion that Baron von Elmur liked me any better than my countrymen,' said Rallywood aloud.

'Ah, no, perhaps not; but now, you will understand, he wishes to please me!' Countess Isolde answered with an air of mysterious importance.

'He is not alone in wishing to do that,' returned Rallywood, ashamed even as he uttered it, of the meaningless compliment.

'Jack,' she said, with a proud raising of her blonde head, 'you are my friend, and of course you wish to please me. But everyone will want to stand well with me some day—when I have power—and then you shall see what I will do for those whom I wish to please!'

Every word she spoke added to the certainty that some new plot was afoot, and Rallywood glanced round for Counsellor's stout figure.

'You are glad to come to Sagan?' persisted his companion; 'say you are glad.'

'I've never been more glad of anything in my life!' Rallywood replied with truth, and then, his good angel rather than his mother's wit coming to his rescue, he got away from the dancing-salon, and found Counsellor at the entrance preparing to leave.

'I'll walk round with you, Major,' he proposed.

'I'm not going your way,' replied Counsellor. 'Besides, I wish to drive. Hullo, you have got hold of my gloves!' and snatching at the gloves—which happened to be Rallywood's—he thrust his own into the young man's hand, saying in a low voice as he did so, 'Be on the Cloister Bridge in half an hour. Good-night!'

At the appointed time, Rallywood, having replaced his military greatcoat by one less remarkable, was waiting on the bridge, when he was accosted by a hunchbacked fellow in a shabby MaÄsaun sheepskin, who dropped a rough English 'Good-night,' as he passed. Presently Rallywood followed him until they came out into an open country road where the biting tsa met them full face.

'This tsa is deadly! Quick! what is it you have to tell me?' said Counsellor's voice.

Rallywood answered in a few rapid sentences.

'Yes, I fancied something of the kind was due. What an inestimable blessing it is that such women as the Countess Sagan exist—to satisfy diplomatic curiosity! We must find out the precise limits of the German game at the Castle of Sagan. It is lucky for you, John, my son, that your duty as a MaÄsaun soldier to the MaÄsaun nation and as an Englishman to your own, run in this instance on the same lines.'

'They always will.'

'Don't be too sure of that! There may come a day when your public and your private honour will stand face to face, hopelessly irreconcilable. What then?'

'When anything so extremely awkward comes to pass, I suppose I shall have to make up my mind on the subject,' replied Rallywood with a lazy yawn, 'in the meantime it is to much trouble. Just at present my part is simple, and I look for the game to turn in our favor.'

Counsellor stood still, as if in consideration, for a minute.

'The stake may seem to be a small one—just this useless scrap of country,' he said at length, 'but the issues are far-reaching, and therefore all Europe is taking a hand in the game. How will it end? I don't know! The Fates shuffle and men handle the cards, but God cuts! Thirty years' experience has taught me that. I didn't believe it once—I do now.'