"Your Majesty," she cried, "has, I believe, already received information of the true position of affairs. The marriage was no marriage. A quixotic piece of nonsense, half-hearted, soon repented, at least on one side. The deeds of annulment are actually drawn up. Count Kielmansegg's signature—or I am very much mistaken—will be promptly affixed now, and it is not to be imagined, as your Majesty will well believe, that my husband's niece will then withhold hers. It would be against all feminine delicacy, all proper pride."
She shot a look of fury at her niece; then she nudged the Burgrave, who instantly reasseverated in his deep bass:
"The deed of annulment is drawn up, sire."
Jerome's good humour returned. He rubbed his hands. In spite of all his royal assumption, much of the exuberant gesture of the Corsican had stuck to him, to the distaste of his stolid subjects.
"Il faut aller vite, vite, alors. We must make haste," he averred.
To make haste and enjoy was, indeed, the rule of his existence. Now, a Lent of unexampled rigour seemed inevitably drawing near him, and all the more vertiginous was his carnival. So vertiginous indeed, that, willingly blind though she was, the Queen, true German daughter of Würtemberg, had withdrawn from the whirl, giddy and panting, to take refuge at Napoleonshöhe till such time as her spouse would come to sober sense again.
Jerome considered the girl a moment longer in silence. That she should flush and pale beneath his glance, look anger at him from her deep eyes and then avert her head with an insulted turn of the neck, all added so much fuel to his easily kindled flame. He wished to go quick, quick; but if she gave him a bit of a chase, so much the better. And now he found a smile for Betty, and a gracious word, ere he passed on, taking the Burgrave by the arm. Betty might do very well for an idle hour, by-and-by, perhaps; but, heavens, how many Betties had he not known!
The Burgravine's self-esteem was at once too profound and too sensitive not to realize the completeness of her failure. But vanity has its heroines. None could have guessed, as she paired off merrily with d'Albignac, the extent of her mortification. Yet it was something very little short of torture that she was enduring as she smiled and coquetted and fanned herself, and babbled her pretty babble.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE SONG OF THE WOODS