"Your Majesty's pardon, while I say it is impossible—I, Von Markstein. For I tell you she has neither the position nor the birth 230 that she claims, and I can prove it!"
Maximilian turned on him fiercely; then the old face, so closely associated with every crisis of his life, appealed to his youth and to his manhood. "Take care, Von Markstein," he said, but in a different tone from that which he had meant to use.
The Chancellor—for all his apparent brusquerie, a diplomat before he was a man—was quick to see and understand the change, as quick to take advantage.
"Punish me as you will, Your Majesty," he said, making no further effort to control the shaking of his voice and hands, since age and infirmity were at this moment his best advocates. "I am an old man; my work for you and yours is nearly done. Cheerfully will I bow to dismissal, if my last effort in your service may save the ship of state from wreck. I would not speak what I do not know; and I do know that the two English ladies who have been staying at the Schloss Lynarberg are not the persons they pretend to be."
"Who has been lying to you, Chancellor?" cried Maximilian, who held 231 the temper he vowed not to lose in clenched hands.
"To me, no one. To Your Majesty, to society in Salzbrück, two adventuresses have lied."
The Emperor leapt to his feet. "If you were a young man, I would kill you for that," he said.
"I know you would. Even as it is, my life is yours. But, for God's sake, for your dead father's sake, hear me first."
Maximilian stared out of the window at the vanishing landscape, his lips a tense white line. Presently he sat down.
"Very well, I will hear you," he said. "Because I do not fear to hear anything that you can say."