"Inoffensive, you call them?" protested "Iron Heart" incredulously. 238 "Inoffensive, when they came to this country for the purpose of using the young woman's beauty to ensnare Your Majesty's affections, to entrap you into some sort of declaration? But, great heaven, it is true indeed that my brain feels the advance of years! I have forgotten to implore that Your Majesty will tell me whether you have mentioned the word marriage to the lady? I pray that you have not so far compromised your self and Rhaetia."
"I will answer that question by another. Do you believe that Miss de Courcy came to Rhaetia for the express purpose of 'entrapping me', as you call it?"
"In truth, I scarcely credit even her ambition with as high a flight as Your Majesty's avowed intentions. I believe that she would have been satisfied with far less—far less."
"In that case, you think she would have been overjoyed with an offer to become the morganatic wife of the Emperor?"
"Overjoyed is a mild word, Your Majesty. Overwhelmed might be nearer."
"Yet I tell you that she refused me last night, and is leaving Rhaetia 239 to-day rather than listen to further entreaties."
Maximilian leaned forward to launch this thunderbolt, his brown hands on his knees, his eyes eager. The recollections, half-bitter, half- sweet, called up by his own words, caused Sylvia to appear in his imagination more beautiful, more completely desirable even than before.
He was delighted with the expression on Von Markstein's face, though it quickly faded. "Now, what arguments have you left?" he broke out in the brief silence.
"All that I had before—more, indeed. For what Your Majesty has said only shows that the lady is more ambitious, more self-confident, therefore more dangerous, than I had supposed. She staked much upon the power of her charms; and she might have won, had you not an old servant who wouldn't be fooled by the enchantments of Helen herself."
"She has won," said Maximilian. Then, hastily: "God forgive me for chiming in with your humour, and speaking as if she had played a game. 240 That is far enough from my meaning. By simply being herself she has won me, such as I am; she has proved that, if she cares at all, it is for the man and not the Emperor, since she called an offer which most ambitious women would have welcomed, an insult. Yes, Chancellor, that was the word she used; and it was almost the last she said to me; which is the reason I am travelling to-day. And nothing that you have told me has any power to hold me back."