  The Regent signed the last document, and, pushing it across the table, laid aside the pen. “How much better it would be if that were ‘Armand, Rex,’” she said. The Prime Minister was putting up his papers. “And better, still, if it were ‘Dehra, Regina,’” he returned, closing the portfolio and locking it. She made a gesture of dissent. “There would be no need for the Book, then,” he continued; “and no danger of Lotzen becoming king. It is God’s blessing on Valeria that you were you, and could assume the government—otherwise, we would have had civil war. Your Highness has no conception of the sentiment in the Army; it is two to one for the Archduke; but Lotzen’s third is unduly powerful because of a coterie of high officers, who are jealous of the ‘American,’ as he is styled, and their readiness to precipitate a contest; and Armand’s contingent is unduly weak, because they do not feel assured that he would countenance war. In a word, the rogues and rascals are for Lotzen—they recognize a kindred leader and the opportunity for high reward. But they would accept you for Queen with enthusiasm—even rogues and rascals love a pretty woman who can rule them with a heavy hand.” Dehra looked at her hand, slender, soft, small, and smiled. Count Epping nodded. “Very pretty,” he said, “very pretty, but it’s a Dalberg hand, you know—and they know, too.” “And as they shall experience,” she remarked, eyelids narrowed just a trifle, “if they show a disposition to forget it.... And in the experience they may learn that the Governor of Dornlitz also has a Dalberg hand.” “There will be no civil war now,” said the Count; “your regency has quite obviated any such catastrophe; and if the Book be found, its decision will be accepted without protest by the Army, as well as by the people at large. What I fear is the contest in the House of Nobles—the margin there will be very narrow, I apprehend; and that involves high feeling and fierce antagonism and smoldering family hate fanned into fire; and then, if Lotzen lose, the new king may have a chance to show his hand.” “Armand the First will show it, never fear,” she said, with the pride a woman always has for him she loves. “I have no fear,” he said; “if I had, I would not help to make him king—yet, if I may be permitted, Henry the Fifth would be a title far more pleasing to the nation than Armand the First. He bears the Great Henry’s features, let him bear his name, as well.” She sprang up. “He shall, he shall!” she exclaimed; “he will do it for me, I know.” The old Count’s face softened in one of its rare smiles. “He would be a poor sort of man, indeed, my lady, who would deny anything to you,” he said, and in his stately, old-fashioned way he bent and kissed her hand. As he arose, the Princess suddenly slipped an arm around his neck, and for the briefest moment her soft lips rested on his forehead. The Prime Minister kept his face lowered; when he raised it, the tears still trembled in his eyes. “Don’t tell the Archduke,” she laughed gayly, seeing how he was moved. “No,” said he, laughing with her now, “I’ll not tell him—and lose all chance for another.” “I’ll give you another now,” she cried, and, springing on the chair beside him, she kissed him on the cheek. “Now go—you’ve had more than your share—but you shall have a third the day Armand is king.” He took her hand, and gallantly helped her down. “You give me another object in life,” he said.—“I shall claim it if the King permit.” “You may claim it, before him and all the Court,” she answered. After Count Epping had gone, the Princess turned to the table, and sitting on the corner, one foot on a chair, the other dangling, took up some papers he had left with her for examination. In the midst of it the Duke of Lotzen was announced. “I am engaged,” she said curtly; “I cannot see him ... or stay, admit him.” After her question and his answer in the garden near the sun-dial, two days before, she had decided she would receive him only upon occasions of ceremony, when, to exclude him, would have required a special order; but this unexpected and, for him, amazingly early visit, piqued her curiosity too sharply to resist. But there was no cordiality in her look nor attitude, as he bowed before her in the intensely respectful manner he could assume so well. She made no change in her position, nor offered him her hand, nor smiled; her eyes showed only polite indifference as, for a space, she let him wait for leave to speak. When she gave it, her voice was as indifferent as her eyes. “Well, Your Royal Highness,” she said, “how can we serve you?” Not a shade of her bearing had missed the Duke, and though his anger rose, yet his face bore only a placid smile of amused unconcern. “I desire the Regent’s permission,” he said, “to absent myself from the country for an indefinite period.” “It is granted—a year, if you wish.” The Duke laughed softly, almost mockingly, indeed. “I fear I may not stay quite so long,” he answered, “much as it would please me to oblige you. My presence will be necessary in a certain ceremony in the Cathedral, that is fixed for a few weeks short of a year.” The Regent’s eyes narrowed. “In the crypt, you mean?—your absence will, at least, postpone the ceremony—had you remained, I imagine it would have occurred much earlier.” Even Lotzen’s calmness was disturbed by such a threat from a woman—and, momentarily, his color heightened and his eyes snapped in irritated surprise. Then he bowed. “I am glad to have been shown the claws so early,” he replied with sneering sarcasm; “I shall endeavor to keep beyond their reach. But I shall do my best to furnish the crypt another tenant, though I will not promise to put my Court in mourning for him.” The Princess shrugged her shapely shoulders. “It is quite unnecessary to tell us what your barbaric nature told us long ago,” she replied. “When do you wish to depart?” “Within the week.” “And for where?” “For France—Paris in particular.” “Very well—prefer your request through the regular channel, as any other officer, and I will grant it;” and with a perfunctory nod, she resumed her reading. “I am permitted to withdraw?” he asked. “You are always permitted to withdraw,” she answered, without looking up. “I like your spirit, Dehra,” he laughed; “you and I would make an unconquerable pair; it is a pity you won’t be my queen.” She pointed toward the door. “Go, sir,” she ordered, her voice repressed to unusual softness; “go! nor present yourself again until you have received permission.” And with a smile and a bow, he went; backing slowly from the room, in an aggravation of respect. He had not come to the Palace for leave to go to France, or any where else; where he wanted to go, and when, he went. But his plans required that he be absolutely free and untrammeled, and so he had done this to insure himself against being ordered suddenly to some military duty that might hamper his movements even slightly. And his visit had been doubly successful—he had the permission, and in such a form that he was given the utmost liberty, and he had also learned the Regent’s real attitude toward him, and that even with her it would be a fight without quarter. What the American would make it, the dead bodies in the De Saure house had indicated as plainly as spoken words—and, indeed, as such he knew they had been deliberately intended. As he passed one of the windows in the corridor, he caught, far off amid the trees, the sheen of a white gown; he paused, and presently he recognized Mlle. d’EssoldÉ. With a smile of sudden purpose, he went quickly down a private stairway that opened on the Park below the marble terrace, and, eyes on the white gown, that showed at intervals through the bushes, he sauntered toward it. There was, to be sure, a woman with raven hair and dead-white cheek at the Ferida, but there was also a woman yonder, and handier, with golden hair and shell-pink cheek; and variety was much to his taste, at times—and the picture on the stair still lingered with him, fresh and alluring. True, she had not received his advances with that flattered acquiescence he was rather used to, but he had no particular objection to temporary opposition; it gave zest to the victory—and, with him, victory had been rarely lost. He encountered her in a narrow path, walled in by thick hedges of scarlet japonica, turning the corner suddenly and greeting her with a smile of well assumed surprise; stopping quite a little way off and bowing, his cap across his heart. And she stopped, also; touched by fear and repugnance, as though a snake lay in her path. “A happy meeting, mademoiselle,” he said. “For whom, sir?” she asked, turning half away. “For me,” he laughed, going toward her; “and for you, too, I hope.” She put her back to the hedge and made no answer. “I owe you a very abject apology, for the other day,” he said, standing close beside her, and leaning on his sword. “I fear I was brutally rude.” “There isn’t the least doubt of it,” she replied, and made to pass on. He stepped before her. “And are so still,” she added. “Come, Elise,” he smiled, still blocking the way, “come; forgive me.” “Very well, I forgive you,” she said, indifferently, and tried again to pass. “Nonsense, my dear,” catching her wrist, “put a bit of warmth into it—and then prove it by a little stroll with me toward the lake.” She recoiled at his touch, much as though the snake had stung her, and tried to wrench free, tearing her thin gown and scarring her flesh on the sharp thorns of the japonica, but making no outcry. And this encouraged Lotzen; she was playing it very prettily indeed—to yield presently, the weary captive of superior strength. That a woman might be honest in her resistance, he was always slow to credit; but that one should actually be honest, and yet struggle silently rather than permit others to see her with him, was quite beyond his understanding. He glanced up and down the path; no one was in sight, and the hedge was high—he would make the play a little faster. Hitherto, he had been content to hold her with a sure grip, and let her fling about in futile strivings; now he laughed, and drew her slowly toward him, his eyes fixed significantly upon her flushed face and its moist red lips, parted with the breath-throbs. “Where shall I kiss you first, little one?” he asked—“on the mouth, or a check, or the gleaming hair?”—He held her back an instant in survey.... “Coy?—too coy to answer—come, then, let it be the lips now, and the others later, by the lake.” She had ceased to struggle, and her blue eyes were watching the Duke in fascinated steadiness. To him, it signified victory and a willing maid—he took a last glance at the path—then with a cry and a curse he dropped her wrist and sprang back, wringing his hand, the blood gushing from a ragged wound across its back, where Elise d’EssoldÉ’s teeth had sunk into the flesh. And she, with high-held skirts, was flying toward the Palace. He sprang in pursuit—and stopped; she would pass the hedge before he could overtake her; and the open Park was no place for love making of the violent sort—nor with a wound that spurted red. The business would have to bide, for the present.... Over toward the terrace he saw the flutter of a white gown. “Damn the little cat!” he muttered; “she shall pay me well for this.” Elise d’EssoldÉ, spent with running, her brain in a whirl, her hair dishevelled, weak-kneed and trembling now with the reaction, reached the marble steps near the pergola and sank on the lowest, just as Colonel Moore came springing down them, his eyes toward the japonica walk, searching for the girl in a white gown whom he was to have met there half an hour ago. And he would have passed, unseeing, had she not spoken. “Ralph!” she said, “Ralph!” He swung around. “Elise!” he exclaimed, “I’m sorry to be so late—I was—heaven, child, what has happened?” The sight of him, and the sound of his voice, had calmed her instantly and put her pulse to normal beating; and now that she was with him, safe and unscathed, the coquette in her could not resist the temptation to torment him. “Another kept the rendezvous,” she answered, with affected naÏvetÉ. He pointed to the torn gown. “And that?” he asked. “I did it.” “And the hair?” “The penalty of an ill-arranged coiffure.” “And the red mark on your face—blood, it looks like.” “Blood!” she cried; “blood? where—where?” “On your lips—around the mouth—” The coquette vanished—the horror of it all flashed back upon her:—Lotzen’s sybaritic leer—his easy confidence of assured success—the touch of his loathsome hand to her face—the sickening sensation as her teeth cut through his flesh and scraped the bones beneath—with a cry of disgust she sprang up, swayed unsteadily, and would have fallen had not Moore caught her. “Water!” she implored, “water!” rubbing her lips frantically with her handkerchief—“water, oh, water!” Amazed—mystified—alarmed, he stood an instant irresolute—then swinging her up, he bore her to where, near the sun-dial, a fountain played and splashed among the giant ferns. As they reached there, the nervous tumult subsided as quickly as it came, and she slipped swiftly out of his arms, and knelt beside the fountain, the spray powdering her hair with rainbow dust. And when she had bathed her face free of the blood-stain—though she could not wash away the red of her own embarrassment—she ventured to look at him. He met her with a smile, that showed only sharp concern and tenderest sympathy. “My child,” he said, taking her hand, in the most gentle deference, and holding it in both of his, “tell me what has unstrung you so completely—you who are always merry and serene.” She gently freed her hand, and, gathering up the trailing ends of her skirt, turned toward the Palace. “If I tell you,” she said, “promise me that you won’t make a scene nor try to punish him.” “Him!” he exclaimed, stopping short, “him! God in Heaven, was it that devil, Lotzen?”—he seized her arm—“where is he—where is he?” She smiled at him very sweetly, loving the anger that blazed his face. “I’ll tell you nothing,” she answered, “so long as you are in that humor—your promise first.” “No—no—I promised and forbore the other day; but now, with that”—sweeping his hand at gown and hair—“I’ll forbear no longer.” She moved on. “Come, Elise, who was it?” She gave him another smile, but shook her head. “Was it Lotzen—tell me, was it?” Again the smile, and the motion of refusal. “Very well, if you won’t, I’ll find out for myself.” “You cannot—the man won’t tell—and no one saw it.” He laughed with quiet menace. “I’ll find him,” he said; “I’ll find him.” Quick fear seized her. He would succeed, she knew; and then, what would he do! Something, doubtless, to try to force the Duke to fight; and which would result only in his own disgrace and in being driven from the country. He must not suffer for her misfortune—and Dornlitz, without her dear Irishman, would be impossible; and she was not yet quite ready to go with him. She had told him something—as much as she might with proper reserve—of Lotzen’s behavior that other morning; and it had been difficult enough to restrain him then. Now, with the dishevelled hair, and torn gown, and blood on her face, only his own word would hold him. “Promise me, Ralph, promise me,” she implored; “there is no reason for punishment—see,” holding out her hand, “here is the only place he touched me—only on the wrist—I swear it, Ralph—” He took the hand, and looked at the soft, blue-veined flesh, chafed and abraded with the pinch of iron fingers; and again the rage of hate swept him, and he put the hand down sharply and turned away his head, unwilling that she should see his face while passion marked it. She touched his arm, almost timidly. “Promise me, dear,” she said—“please promise me.” She did not realize what she had called him; nor, indeed, did he, until days afterward, too late to turn it to account; though what he answered worked far more to his profit, than had he used the chance offered by an inadvertent endearment. “I promise,” he said; “I ought not to; but because you wish it, I promise—now will you tell me?” She looked up at him gratefully—and such women as Elise d’EssoldÉ can say much with their eyes. They had mounted the steps and were on the terrace; she pointed into the Park. “It was in the japonica walk,” she said; “I was waiting for you, when Lotzen came upon me, seemingly by accident——” “There are no accidents with Lotzen,” Moore broke in. “It may be, but he chose to treat it so;—I tried to pass—he stopped me and begged forgiveness for his brutal rudeness of the other day; I forgave him indifferently, hoping to escape quickly, and tried again to pass. He caught my wrist, and demanded a kiss, and that I walk with him to the lake. I was close against the hedge, and it was in my struggles to get free from him that the sharp thorns tore my gown. He let me thrash out my strength, holding me all the time by this wrist; presently, when he was about to kiss me by main force, I bit him in the hand, and escaped, running at top speed, and in fright and exhaustion collapsing where you found me.... That was all, Ralph,” she ended. Moore’s intense repression found some relief in a long breath. “All!” he said, rather huskily; “all! ... well, all I ask is, some day, to have him against me, sword in hand.” “Your promise!” she exclaimed. He smiled down at her. “The promise holds, child, as you well know; but this affair of the Book may work an opportunity.” “If it does, take it,” said she instantly. “Trust me, my lady,” he answered, as he left her at the small door used only by the Princess and her privileged intimates. “Your lady?” she echoed across the sill—her natural witchery increased four-fold, in his eyes, by the tumbled hair—“your lady—perhaps.” In the hallway, just at her own room, she met the Princess, who, woman-like, marked at a glance every detail of her disordered attire. “Good heaven, Elise,” she exclaimed, “what has that Adjutant of mine been doing to you?” “Practicing sword tricks on my skirt,” said she, holding it up to show the rents, “and learning to be un coiffeur.” “He seems to be as uncommonly proficient in the one as he is deficient in the other,”—then looked at her questioningly; “but seriously, Elise, what happened?—if you care to tell me.” “The Duke of Lotzen found me alone in the japonica walk.” The Princess struck her hands together angrily. “Lotzen! oh, Lotzen!” she exclaimed; “some day—did Moore come on him there? If he did, the some-day is already here.” “Fortunately, no, since I escaped unharmed.” “Unfortunately, you mean—it saved to the world another scoundrel.” “And Ralph would be a fugitive in disgrace,” said Mlle. d’EssoldÉ. “With the Lion and a Brigadier’s commission as a punishment,” the Regent answered. “He wanted to go back, and it was I that kept him.” “It’s a misfortune—more than a misfortune; it’s almost a calamity—my dear Elise, if ever again your Colonel get so proper an excuse to kill that devil, pray don’t intervene.” “I’m sorry—very sorry, I’m almost criminally stupid.” “Nonsense, dear,” said the Princess; “there will be other chances—meanwhile, what happened?... Bit him! Oh, delightful, delightful!” The other gave a shiver of repugnance. “Disgusting, I should call it, now—I did it in the frenzy to be free. I shall never forget the horrible thing.” “Nor will he—you’ve marked him for life—the pity is it wasn’t his face.—Go on; what happened then?”... “The nasty brute,” said Dehra, when she had heard the last detail—“and save for the punishment you yourself administered, he, for the time, must go scatheless; you cannot permit such a story to go through the Court and the Clubs; and you may be quite sure he won’t tell it.” She struck her hands together vehemently. “Lotzen! oh Lotzen!—Some day, Elise, your lover or mine is going to be granted the blessed privilege of putting a sword through his vile heart.” She sprang up. “Come, dear, you need diversion—we will ride; and if I can get the Archduke, we’ll take your Colonel, too.” She went to the telephone.... “Is that you, Armand?”—when the recall bell rang.... “This is Dehra—Elise and I are off for a ride; if you can go with us, I’ll have Moore go, too.... Bother your important appointment; break it.... You can’t?... We can be back by four o’clock.... Have matters to see to; will they occupy all the afternoon?... They will?... And you need Moore, also?—all right, take him—what is your appointment?... Can’t tell me over telephone?... Tell me to-night—well, I suppose I can wait—come for dinner.... Yes, stupid.... Good-bye, dear.” She hung up the receiver. “You heard, Elise; neither of them can go. I should hate to be a man and always busy. Come, we will go ourselves, and make an afternoon of it—and stop at the Twisted Pines for tea.” |
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