“It has this to do, Monsieur,” she answered me composedly, “that her Highness’s interests are as dear to me as my own, and that I am glad to learn that the man she is to wed has a merciful heart. I know a man,” she went on, “in our own country who passes for the finest, the bravest, the most gallant, but when he brings a horse in from the chase its legs will be trembling and it will be panting so that it can scarce draw breath, because the rider is so brave and dashing that he must go the fastest of all, and he will have left his mark upon the poor beast’s sides in great furrows where he has ploughed them with his spurs. He is greatly admired by every one; but his horses die, and his hounds shrink when he moves his hand: that is what my country-people call being manly—being a real cavalier!”
The scorn of her tone was something beyond the mere girlish pettishness I generally associated with her; but to me, except as she represented or influenced her mistress, she had never had any interest. And so again impatiently I brought her back to the object of our meeting.
“Her Highness has entrusted you with a message?” I asked.
“Her Highness would first of all know,” said the maid of honour, “if you fully realise the difficulties you may bring upon yourself by the marriage you propose?”
“The Princess,” said I proudly, “has condescended to say that she will trust herself to me. After that, as far as I am concerned, there can be no question of difficulty. As for her, if she will consent to accompany me to England, no trouble or reproach need ever reach her ears. If she prefers to remain here, I shall none the less be able to protect my wife, were it against the whole Empire itself.”
“That is the right spirit,” said Mademoiselle Ottilie, nodding her head approvingly. “What you say has not got a grain of common sense, but that is all as it should be. And next,” she continued, drawing closer to me, for there was a twilight dimness about us, and standing on tiptoe in the endeavour to bring her gaze on a level with mine, “her Highness wishes to know”—she dropped her voice a little—“if you love her very much?”
As if the gaze of those yellow hazel eyes of hers had cast a sudden revealing light upon my soul, I stood abashed and dumb, self-convicted by my silence. Love! Did I love her whom I would make my wife? Taken up with schemes of vainglory and ambition, what room had I in my heart for love? In all my triumph at having won her, was there one qualifying thread of tenderness? Would I, in fine, have sought the woman, beautiful though she was, were she not the Princess?
In a sort of turmoil I asked myself these things under the compelling earnestness of Mademoiselle Ottilie’s eyes, and everything in myself looked strange and hideous to myself, as beneath a vivid lightning flash the most familiar scene assumes a singular and appalling aspect.
In another moment she moved away and turned aside from me; and then, even as after the lightning flash all things resume their normal aspect, I wondered at my own weak folly, and my blood rose hotly against the impertinence that had evoked it.
“By what right,” said I, “Mademoiselle, do you ask me such a question? If it be indeed by order of her Highness, pray tell her that when she will put it to me herself I will answer it to herself.”