Leopold thought it more than possible that, by the time of his return to Kronburg, the Chancellor would be as anxious to wriggle out of his proposal to visit the Prince’s hunting lodge, as he had been to have it accepted a few hours before.

“He sha’n’t escape his humiliation, though,” the Emperor told himself. “He shall go, and he shall beg forgiveness for his suspicions, in sackcloth and ashes. Nothing else can satisfy me now.”

Thinking thus, Leopold looked sharply from the window as his special slowed into the central station at Kronburg, along the track which had been kept clear for its arrival. No other train was due at the moment, therefore few persons were on the platform, and a figure in a long gray coat, with its face shadowed by a slouch hat, was conspicuous.

The Emperor had expected to see that figure; but vaguely he wished there were not so much briskness and self-confidence in the set of the massive head and shoulders. The young man believed absolutely in his love; but he would have been gratified to detect a something of depression in the enemy’s air, which he might translate as a foreknowledge of failure.

“I hope your Majesty will forgive the liberty I have taken, in coming to the station without a distinct invitation to do so,” were the Chancellor’s first words as he met the Emperor. “Knowing that you would almost certainly arrive by special train, I came down from my house some time ago, that I might be on hand without fail when you arrived, to place my electric carriage at your service. I thought it probable that you would not have sent to the Palace, and therefore it might save you some slight inconvenience if I were on the spot. If you will honor my poor conveyance—”

“Don’t let us delay our business for explanations or compliments, if you please, Chancellor,” the Emperor cut him short, brusquely. “I counted on your being here, with your carriage. Now for the hunting lodge in the woods!”

As he spoke, his eyes were on the old man’s face, which he hoped to see fall, or change; but there was no visible sign of discomfiture, and von Breitstein made no attempt to excuse himself from making the proposed visit. Evidently nothing had happened during the hours since the message by telephone, to change the Chancellor’s mind.

“Yes, your Majesty,” came the prompt response. “Now for the hunting lodge in the woods. I am ready to go with you there—as I always have been, and always shall be ready to serve you when I am needed.”

It was on Leopold’s tongue to say, that it would be well if his Chancellor’s readiness could be confined to those occasions when it was needed; but he shut his lips upon the words, and walked by the old man’s side in frozen silence.

The carriage was waiting just outside the station, and the moment the two men were seated, the chauffeur started, noiselessly and swiftly.

Both windows were closed, to keep out the chill of the night air, but soon Leopold impatiently lowered one, forgetting the Chancellor’s old-fashioned hatred of draughts, and stared into the night. Already they were approaching the outskirts of the great town, and flying past the dark warehouses and factories of the neighborhood, they sped toward the open country.

The weather, still warm the evening before—that evening of moonlight, not to be forgotten—had turned cold with morning; and to-night there was a pungent scent of dying leaves in the air. It smote Leopold in the face, with the wind of motion, and it seemed to him the essential perfume of sadness. Never again would he inhale that fragrance of the falling year without recalling this hour.

He was half mad with impatience to reach the end of the journey, and confound the Chancellor once for all; yet, as the swift electric carriage spun smoothly along the white road, and landmark after landmark vanished behind tree-branches laced with stars, something within him, would at last have stayed the flying moments, had that been possible. He burned to ask questions of von Breitstein, yet would have died rather than utter them.

It was a relief to the Emperor, when, after a long silence, his companion spoke,—though a relief which carried with it a prick of resentment. Even the Chancellor had no right to speak first, without permission from his sovereign.

“Forgive me, your Majesty,” the old man said. “Your anger is hard to bear; yet I bear it uncomplainingly because of my confidence that the reward is not far off. I look for it no further in the future than to-night.”

“I, too, believe that you won’t miss your reward!” returned the Emperor sharply.

“I shall have it, I am sure, not only in your Majesty’s forgiveness, but in your thanks.”

“I’ll forgive you when you’ve asked my pardon for your suspicions, and when you’ve found Miss Mowbray for me.”

“I have already found her, and am taking you to her now.”

“Then, you actually believe in your own story? You believe that this sweet and beautiful young girl is a fast actress, a schemer, a friend of your notoriously gallant friend, and willing to risk her reputation by paying a late visit, unchaperoned, to him at his hunting lodge in the woods! You are after all a very poor judge of character, if you dream that we shall see her there.”

“I shall see her, your Majesty. And you will see her, unless the madness you call love has blinded the eyes of your body as well as the eyes of your mind. That she is now at the lodge I know, for the Prince assured me with his own lips that she had promised to motor out alone with him, and dine.”

“You mean, he told you that his friend the actress had promised. I’ll stake my life, even he didn’t dare to say Miss Mowbray.”

“He said Miss Brett, the actress, it’s true. But when he called upon her at her hotel (where he and I met to discuss a matter which is no secret to your Majesty), he asked for Miss Mowbray. And the message that came down, I heard. It was that Miss Mowbray would be delighted to see his Royal Highness. This left no doubt in my mind that, after giving out that she would leave to-day, the lady had remained in Kronburg for the express purpose of meeting her dear friend the Prince, the handsomest and best dressed young man in Europe—after your Majesty, of course. And it was quite natural for her to hope that, as she was supposed to be gone, and you were following her, this evening’s escapade would never be discovered.”

“Please spare me your deductions, Chancellor,” said the Emperor, curtly, “and pray understand now, if you have not understood before, that I am with you in this expedition not to prove you right, but wrong; and nothing you can say will convince me that the Prince’s actress and Miss Mowbray are one. If we find a woman at the hunting lodge, it will not be the lady we seek—unless she has been kidnapped; and as you will presently be obliged to eat every word you’ve spoken, the fewer such bitter pills you provide for yourself to swallow, the better.”

Thus snubbed by the young man whom he had held in his arms, an imperious as well as an Imperial infant, the old statesman sought sanctuary in silence. But he had said that which had been in his mind to say, and he was satisfied. Meekness was not his mÉtier, yet he could play the part of the faithful servant, humbly loyal through injustice and misunderstanding; and he played it now, because he knew it to be the one effective rÔle. He sat beside the Emperor with bowed head, and stooping shoulders which suggested the weakness of old age, his hands clasped before him; and from time to time he sighed patiently.

As they glided under the dark arch of the Buchenwald, Leopold spoke again.

“You have led me to suppose that our call at the hunting lodge will be a surprise visit to the Prince. That is the case, isn’t it?”

Count von Breitstein would have preferred that the question had not been asked. He had intended to convey the impression which the Emperor had received, but he had not clothed it in actual statement. Luckily the Prince was as clever as he was good looking, and he could be trusted as an actor, otherwise the old man would have been still more reluctant to commit himself.

“Were our visit expected, we should not be likely to find the lady,” said he. “The Prince and I are on such friendly terms, your Majesty, that he didn’t mind confessing he was to have a pretty actress as his guest. He also answered a few questions I asked concerning her, freely and frankly, for to do so he had to tell me only what the world knows. How could he dream that the flirtations or the visits of a Miss Jenny Brett could be of the slightest importance to the Emperor of Rhaetia? Had he guessed, however, that the entertainment he meant to offer her might be interrupted, naturally he would have taken some means to protect her from annoyance.”

“This night’s work will give him cause to pick a private quarrel with me, if he likes,” said the Emperor, convinced of the Chancellor’s good faith.

“I don’t think he will choose, your Majesty. You are in a mood to be glad if he did, I fear. But no; I need not fear. You will always remember Rhaetia, and put her interests before your own wishes.”

“You weren’t as confident of that a few hours ago.”

“Even then I knew that, when the real test should be applied, your Majesty’s cool head would triumph over the hot impulse of youth. But see, we’re passing through the village of Inseleden, fast asleep already; every window dark. In six or seven minutes at this speed, we shall be at the lodge.”

The Emperor laughed shortly. “Add another seven minutes to your first seven, and we shall be out of the lodge again, with Chancellor von Breitstein a sadder and a wiser man than he went in.”

Meekness was once more the part for the old man to play, and raising his hands, palm upwards, in a gesture of generous indulgence for his young sovereign, he denied himself the pleasure of retort.

The hunting lodge in the wood, now the property of the Chancellor’s accommodating young friend, had until recently belonged to a Rhaetian semi-Royal Prince, who had been compelled by lack of sympathy among his creditors to sell something, and had promptly sold the thing he cared for least. The present owner was a keen sportsman, and though he came seldom to the place, had spent a good deal of money in repairing the quaint, rustic house.

Years had passed since the Emperor had done more than pass the lodge gates; and now the outlines of the low rambling structure looked strange to him, silhouetted against a spangled sky. He was glad of this, for he had spent some joyous days here as a boy, and he wished to separate the old impressions and the new.

Two tall chimneys stood up like the pricked ears of some alert, crouching animal. The path to the lodge gleamed white and straight in the darkness as a parting in the rough black hair of a giant. The trees whispered gossip to each other in the wind, and it seemed to Leopold that they were evil things telling lies and slandering his love. He hated them, and their rustling, which once he had loved. He hated the yellow eyes of the animal with the pricked ears, glittering eyes which were lighted windows; he hated the young Prince who owned the place; and he would have hated the Chancellor more than all, had not the old man limped as he walked up the path, showing how heavy was the burden of his years, as he had never shown it to his Emperor before.

The path led to a hooded entrance, and ascending the two stone steps, the Chancellor lifted the mailed glove which did duty as a knocker. Twice he brought it down on the oak panel underneath, and the sound of metal smiting against wood went echoing through the house, with an effect of emptiness and desolation.

Nobody came to answer the summons, and Leopold smiled in the darkness. He thought it likely that even the Prince was not at home. A practical joke had been played on the Chancellor!

Again the mailed fist struck the panel; an echo alone replied. Count von Breitstein began to be alarmed for the success of his plan. He thanked the night which hid from the keen eyes of the Emperor—cynical now, no doubt—the telltale vein beating hard in his forehead.

“Don’t you think, Chancellor, that after all, you’d better try and take me to some more probable, as well as more suitable, place to look for Miss Mowbray?” he suggested, with a drawl intended to be as aggravating as it actually was. “There doesn’t appear to be any one about. Even the care-takers are out courting, perhaps.”

“But listen, your Majesty,” said von Breitstein, when he knocked again.

Leopold did listen, and heard the ring of a heel on a floor of stone or marble.