"But listen, Your Majesty," said the Chancellor.
Maximilian did listen. Steps could be heard approaching the door inside the house—the sound of a heel on a floor of stone or marble.
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IT was a jäger who opened the door of the hunting-lodge and gazed at the two men standing in the shadow of the porch, apparently without recognition.
"We wish to see the Prince," said the Chancellor crisply, taking the initiative, as he knew that the Emperor would desire him to do.
"The Prince is not at home, sir," returned the jäger.
Maximilian's eyes lightened as he threw a glance of sarcastic meaning at his companion. But "Iron Heart" was undaunted. He knew very well now that this was only a prelude to the comedy, and though he had had a pang of anxiety at first, he thought that his young friend was playing the part allotted him with commendable realism. Naturally, when beautiful actresses came into the country unchaperoned, to dine298with fascinating princes, the least such favoured Royalties could do was to issue notice to an intrusive public that they were "not at home."
"You are mistaken," returned the Chancellor "The Prince is at home, and he will receive us. It will be better for you to admit us without further parley."
Under the domination of the eyes which could quell a Reichstag, the jäger weakened, as doubtless his master had expected would happen in good time. "If may be that I have made a mistake, sir," he stammered, "though I do not think so. If you will have the kindness to walk in and wait until I can inquire whether the Prince has come home, or when he is likely to come home, I——"
"That is not necessary," said the Chancellor. "The Prince dines here with a lady this evening. We will go with you to the door of the dining-room, and follow your announcement of our presence."
But the jäger was no longer uncertain of his duty. The reaction had come, and he faced the invaders boldly. If his master had given299instructions only to be overridden, at least the servant was sincere in his respect for them. He put himself in the doorway, and looked a barrier formidable to dislodge.
"That is impossible, sir!" he exclaimed. "I have my orders, which are that His Royal Highness is not at home to-night, and until I find out differently, nobody, not if it were the Emperor himself, should force himself in."
"You fool, those orders are not for us; and it is the Emperor who will go in." With a step aside, the Chancellor let the light from a hanging lamp in the hall shine full upon Maximilian's face, hitherto masked in shadow.
His boast forgotten, the jäger uttered an exclamation of dismay, and, with a sudden falling of the knees, he left the doorway free.
"Your Majesty!" he faltered. "I did not see—I could not know! Most humbly I beg Your Majesty's gracious pardon. If Your Majesty will but hold me blameless with His Royal Highness——"
"Never mind yourself, and never mind His Royal Highness," broke in the300Chancellor. "Open that door at the end of the hall, and announce the Emperor and Count von Markstein."
The unfortunate jäger, well-nigh in a state of collapse, obeyed. The door of the dining-room, which Maximilian knew of old, was flung wide, and a quavering voice made known to whom it might concern the arrival of "His Imperial Majesty the Emperor and the Herr Chancellor von Markstein."
The scene disclosed was as unreal, in Maximilian's eyes, as a painted picture: the walls of Pompeian red, the bronze candelabra, the polished floor, with rugs of creamy fur, and in the centre a flower- decked table glittering with lights, sparkling with silver; springing up from his chair a young man in evening dress, who faced the door; sitting motionless, her back half-turned, a slender girl in satin of bridal white, her uncovered shoulders gleaming with the soft sheen of pearl in the candle-light. This was the stage setting; these the characters discovered.
At sight of the girl Maximilian stopped on the threshold. All the301blood in his body seemed rushing to his head, then surging back again upon his heart. The impossible had happened. His star had fallen from heaven, and the sky was dark.
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THE Prince came forward. "What a delightful surprise!" he exclaimed. "How good of you both to look me up! But I wish my prophetic soul had hinted to me that it would have been well to delay dinner. We have just reached the third course."
His eyes met the Chancellor's, then hid a twinkle under lashes that a professional beauty might have envied. "You must honour me by dining with us," he went on. "All will be ready in a moment, and I keep a man here whosebisque d'écrevisseis not half bad."
"Thanks," said Maximilian, "we cannot dine. Our visit is purely one of business, and a moment will see it finished. We owe you an explanation for intruding upon you in this manner." He paused; all his calculations were upset by Von Markstein's triumph; deliberately to plan beforehand what he would do if he should find Miss de Courcy in303this man's house would have been to insult her. He had merely arranged a campaign in the event of the Chancellor's defeat. Now, the one course which appealed to him was frankness. He did not look at the girl, though he saw her, and her alone, with his eyes coldly fixed upon the Prince. He knew that she had risen, not in haste, as one who is detected and ashamed, but with a leisured and dainty dignity, as if concerned only to respect his rank. Her face was turned toward him now; he felt it—as a blind man may feel the rising of the sun—though still he would not look. No longer ago than last night at this hour they had been together in the garden at Schloss Lynarberg; he had held her in his arms; she had made him think she loved him. She had acted an agony of resentment because he had offered her his heart in his left hand. Now she was here with this butterfly who flitted through life in a rose-garden of pretty women. They had been laughing and talking before they were interrupted—these two at the dinner-table. The champagne glass beside her plate was half-full. On the plate was304fish, with a pink sauce; she had been enjoying her dinner in the Prince's company. Maximilian was not conscious that he had seen and noted all these trifling details which, together, proved her a soulless thing, light and worthless as a piece of thistledown yet each one was like a separate poisoned thorn that rankled in his flesh.
His pause, his search for the words of explanation which he had volunteered was really brief—scarcely so long as to count for a pause at all; yet he had aged in it. He felt that youth and the joy of life had fallen from him like a mantle, since he stepped across the threshold.
"I have spent some hours to-day," he said, "in looking for this lady. I was told that I should find her in your company. I came, and brought Count von Markstein, to prove to him that he was mistaken. Instead,mymistake has been proved to his satisfaction, since Miss de Courcy is here."
"Miss de Courcy is not here," broke in the girl, speaking for the305first time. "I have reason to believe that she is in India."
"I would to heaven that you were with her or anywhere on earth but where you are!" cried the Emperor. He turned to the Prince. "You have my explanation," he said. "It remains only for Count von Markstein and me to bid you and this lady good-night."
The twinkle had died out of the Prince's eyes, and they sparkled with another light. The scene, though planned, had not been rehearsed; and the effect upon himself, now that it came to be acted, differed from his expectations. His quick temper, never too fast asleep to wake at the first call, sprang up under the look in Maximilian's eyes.
"You'll not bid her good-night in that manner, if you please," he angrily began, when the girl, catching his arm, cut him short. The familiar way in which she touched the gay young Apollo, resting against his shoulder, sent a red-hot dart of pain through Maximilian's nerves, and he scorned himself for it, because his love ought already306to have been uprooted, like a noxious weed.
"Wait, wait!" she cried. "This is my affair, please. You see, the difficulty is that the Emperor doesn't know who I am, and——"
"It is time I told him!" exclaimed the Prince.
"Let the Chancellor do that," said she. "I can see he is dying to. And as he has taken a great deal of trouble, he deserves some reward."
"I have already informed His Imperial Majesty that he would find with the Prince Miss Minnie Brand, an English actress"—the old man bowed, sneering—"justly famous for her talents."
"And His Majesty. What does he say?" The girl's voice sounded anxious now, even wistful. She still stood beside the Prince, but her eyes so appealed to Maximilian's that he could not withhold them, granting her at last a cold and fixed regard.
"I say nothing," he answered. "You have left me nothing to say. You are the Prince's friend. You do not need anything that I can give."
"Yet last night," she cried, "you said you loved me."307
"Is this the place to remind me of that?" he demanded fiercely.
"Yes; because I came here hoping that you would follow. Idocare for the Prince; I should be very ungrateful if I didn't; but I care far more foryou."
The boldness of the announcement, its astounding impertinence, coming as it did, when and where it did, was like a smart box upon the ear, literally staggering Maximilian. Sparks danced before his eyes. He opened his lips to answer her with deadly bitterness, but did not speak. With one look, that pent-up all the passion of outraged love, and a fury of disappointment that was and must ever be unutterable, he turned upon his heel.
"You would go and leave me here?" exclaimed the girl.
He wheeled round in the doorway. "I am not sure how to address you," he said, "since you no longer claim the name by which I have thought of you, nor do I seem any longer to know you. But if there be the308slightest doubt in your mind as to your desire to stay here, I—Count von Markstein and—I would gladly place our carriage at your service."
She ran to him, holding out both hands, like a child who asks indulgence. "If I can explain," she said, with quickening breath, her eyes shining, star-like, "if I tell you that it is quite, quite a mistake, that there was no thought of harm in my coming to this house, that I am true to all you thought me, to all Ihopeyou thought me, will you believe my word?"
Maximilian looked her in the eyes and straightway forgot that he and she were not alone. And the Chancellor saw that he forgot, and wished much to remind him of many things connected with his own presence. But even he dared not speak at that instant, and had to listen, biting his lip with a well-preserved tooth.
"Believe your word!" the Emperor echoed slowly. He would have said, "Why should I believe it, when it is enough that I believe my eyes?"309But he was gazing into hers, and so he could not say it. No other woman's eyes had ever before had power to play tricks with his will, therefore he was the more ready to fall under the spell of hers. "I must believe it!" he pronounced. "It is death to doubt you. Tell me you are all I thought you, show me how it can be so, and I will believe in spite of everything."
"Your Majesty!" groaned the Chancellor. But His Majesty did not hear. It was the Prince who drowned the warning.
"Oh, come!" he exclaimed; "this is going farther than I bargained for. I can't stand all this talk about doubting and proving. The whole thing——"
"Is for me to explain, not you," broke in Sylvia. "It is my right. I will not have it taken from me. Maximilian, last night you said that you cared for me, or—this would never have happened. A few moments ago you asked if the Prince's hunting-lodge were a fit place for me to remind you of that, and I answered yes. It was not time to tell you why, then, but it is time now. I said that this was the proper place,310because it is my brother's house, and if we are ever to be anything to one another, it is fitting that my brother should put my hand in yours."
"At last, then, I can introduce my sister, Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald," ejaculated the Crown Prince of Abruzzia, with a sigh of overwhelming relief.
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
For a moment nobody spoke. The room seemed to ring with Friedrich's words, with the name which, till now, had held so little music for Maximilian's ears. He heard it and was speechless, even as the Chancellor was speech less. He looked at Friedrich, as if he would have spoken; he looked at Sylvia, and forgot to speak. She held out her hands once more, and with an impulse which he did not strive to control, he went down upon one knee as he caught and kissed them.
Long ago she had vowed that he should bend the knee to her, if he were to win her; but now that the prophecy proved true, she bade him rise311as he whispered the one word "Forgive!"
"Oh, it is I who must be forgiven!" she said, with tears instead of triumph in her voice. "You don't half understand yet."
Friedrich and Count von Markstein stole from the room and were not missed. Their parts were played.
"I want no explanation," Maximilian answered. "I want only you."
"I won't try to tell you how it all began—not now. But my ears tingle still with some words which my actions gave you the right to speak," she urged. "Last night I wanted to go into a convent, and, above all things, I wished to get away from Rhaetia. We were forced to wait, because of Miss M'Pherson's illness. When Count von Markstein called, we excused ourselves. But when Fritz's card came up, it was different. We couldn't guess whether or not he really knew who we were. His face of surprise showed us hedidn't. At first he was going to be secretive; but Fritz isn't good at fibs, unless he's had time to prepare them; and a plot he'd just been concocting with the Chancellor312all came out. The truth was, he'd taken me for an actress with whom I'm afraid he'd been flirting in Abruzzia. It seems he'd informed her that there might one day be something between his sister and the Emperor of Rhaetia; she knew, too, that the real De Courcys were Fritz's cousins, for she'd met them when acting in Calcutta. Altogether, for these and other reasons, he fancied I might be Miss Brand, seeking revenge for a slight by humiliating his sister. Imagine how he felt when he sawme! And here's the point where Count von Markstein turned into my guardian angel, instead of driving me from Eden with a flaming sword. He'd told Fritz that you were searching for Mary de Courcy toask her to be the Empress. At this, from being the most miserable, I became the happiest girl on earth. I forgave Fritz, he forgave me, and—I at last induced him to let the plot be carried out to the end. I hadn't doubted what that end would be till you came into this room and I saw the look in your eyes. It was like a dagger of ice in my heart. Tell me you forgive me for everything. Tell me313that, if I'd been different, and content with conventionalities, you would not have loved me more."
He took her in his arms, and held her as if he would never let her go. "If you had been different, I would not have loved you at all," he said. "Yet if things had been different, I could not have helped but love you, just the same. I should have been bound to fall in love with Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald at first sight, as I fell in love with Mary de Courcy."
"Ah, but at best you would have fallen in love with Sylvia because it was your duty. And you fell in love with Mary because it was your duty not to. Which makes it so much better."
"It was no question of duty, but of fate," the Emperor persisted. "The stars ordained that I should love you."
"Then I wish"—and Sylvia laughed happily, as she could afford to laugh now—"that the stars had told me last summer. It would have saved me a great deal of trouble. And yet I don't know," she added314more slowly. "It has been a wonderful adventure. We shall think of it when we are old."
"We shall never be old, for we love each other," said the Emperor.