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'écrevisse 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 303 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 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 was 304 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 305 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 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 already 306 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.