Part 24 (2/2)
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 whose _bisque d'ecrevisse_ is 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 in this 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 gla.s.s beside her plate was half-full. On the plate was fish, 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, _my_ mistake has been proved to his satisfaction, since Miss de Courcy is here.”
”Miss de Courcy is not here,” broke in the girl, speaking for the first 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 rehea.r.s.ed; 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 already to 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.”
”Is this the place to remind me of that?” he demanded fiercely.
”Yes; because I came here hoping that you would follow. I _do_ care for the Prince; I should be very ungrateful if I didn't; but I care far more for _you_.”
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 pa.s.sion 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 the slightest 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.”
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