"If it were so, when he felt the danger he would keep aloof for the woman's sake. You tell me this English miss is at a hotel in Salzbrück. What would be said of her if Maximilian continually visited her there? To meet her incognito would be an insult. For the Emperor of Rhaetia to call upon a young woman day after day at the Hohenburgerhof would bring a storm of scandal about her ears. That would be but poor reward for the woman who saved his life."
Baroness von Lynar flushed faintly, under the delicate apology of her rouge. For the fraction of a second she looked rather blank, for she had insisted upon the argument, and it was going against her. She had not stopped to view the question from every side, in her haste to annoy the Chancellor. So far she had only vexed him, She owed him a great deal more than a petty stab of vexation—a debt which during twenty years, she had been repaying in small instalments. If she could prove her point now—or rather, if Maximilian would prove it for her, and she could wipe the slate clean once and forever from the 117 obligations of revenge, it would be something to live for. Yet how was that to be done, since Count von Markstein was in the right about his Imperial master?
But the wife of the Grand Master of Ceremonies was a woman of resource. The cloud on her still handsome face gradually lifted, and she beamed more brightly than before. The little pin-point prick she had inflicted need not be an anti-climax after all.
"Dear Chancellor, how well you know His Majesty!" she ejaculated. "If—being but a young man, and a hot-blooded one, despite his high principles and his former indifference to women—he should not stop to count the cost for himself, you would no doubt take advantage of your warm friendship to remind him?"
"I should indeed do so," said the Chancellor grimly, "were there the slightest chance of such necessity arising."
"It is but a piece with your well-known integrity and courage. What a comfort, therefore, that the necessity is unlikely to arise!"
The old man stared her in the face. "I must have misunderstood you," 118 he sneered. "I thought, in your opinion, the opposite conclusion was foregone?"
"But" (and the Baroness smiled her most charming smile) "suppose that Lady de Courcy and her daughter were not remaining at the hotel?"
The Chancellor's cold eyes brightened—for, in reality, she had given him an uneasy moment. "Ah—then they are going away?"
"I hear," returned Baroness von Lynar slowly, pleasantly, and distinctly, "that they have been asked to the country to visit one of His Majesty's oldest and most intimate friends."