How stately and splendid he looked, controlling the white charger, with its clanking silver trappings; how the jewelled orders on his breast sparkled, as he saluted his enthusiastic subjects!
"What if he should never love me?" Sylvia thought, as she often thought, with a sharp, jealous spasm of the heart.
Now he was vaulting from his horse, while men in uniforms, and men 93 with ribbons and decorations, came forward, bowing, to receive him. The ceremony of unveiling the statue of Rhaetia, executed by one of the world's most famous sculptors, was about to begin.
To reach the great crimson-draped platform on which he was presently to take his stand, the Emperor must pass within a few yards of Sylvia. His eyes travelled over the brightly coloured throng; what if they should fall upon her? The girl's heart was in her throat; she could feel it beating there, and for a moment the tall white figure was lost in a mist that rose before her eyes.
She had forgotten how she came there—forgotten the stranger in gray and red to whom she owed her great good fortune; when suddenly, while the mist was at its thickest, she grew conscious of the man's presence. So near her he stood, that a quick start, a gathering of his muscles for a spring, flashed like a message by telegraph through her own body. The mist clouding her senses was burnt up in the flame of a 94 strange enlightenment—a clarity of vision which showed not only the hero of the day, the crowd, and the man beside her, but the guilty soul of that man as well.
"He is going to kill the Emperor!"
It was as if a voice hissed the words into her ears; she knew now why she had struggled to win this place, why she had succeeded, what she had to do—or die in failing to do.
The Emperor was not half a dozen yards away. She alone had felt that murderous thrilling, heard that panting breath; she alone guessed what the roll of parchment hid.
While the crowd shouted for "Unser Max!" a figure, gray and red, leapt toward the white one, with clenched hand upraised, something sharp and bright catching the sun in a streak of steely light as it rose and fell.
Maximilian saw, yet not in time to swerve aside. The blade swooped hawk-like, scenting blood. A second's fraction, and it would have drunk deep—a Royal draught; but an arm struck it up and a girl was 95 sobbing; while for her the heavens above and the earth below merged together in whirling chaos.