“I should like to kiss her hand.”
“Well, if you think it worth waiting a quarter of an hour for!” said Sapt, with a slight smile.
“You said a minute, sir.”
“So did she,” answered the constable.
Nevertheless it was a quarter of an hour before Rudolf Rassendyll opened the door and the queen appeared on the threshold. She was very pale, and she had been crying, but her eyes were happy and her air firm. The moment he saw her, young Bernenstein fell on his knee and raised her hand to his lips.
“To the death, madame,” said he, in a trembling voice.
“I knew it, sir,” she answered graciously. Then she looked round on the three of them. “Gentlemen,” said she, “my servants and dear friends, with you, and with Fritz who lies wounded in Wintenberg, rest my honor and my life; for I will not live if the letter reaches the king.”
“The king shall not have it, madame,” said Colonel Sapt. He took her hand in his and patted it with a clumsy gentleness; smiling, she extended it again to young Bernenstein, in mark of her favor. They two then stood at the salute, while Rudolf walked with her to the end of the passage. There for a moment she and he stood together; the others turned their eyes away and thus did not see her suddenly stoop and cover his hand with her kisses. He tried to draw it away, not thinking it fit that she should kiss his hand, but she seemed as though she could not let it go. Yet at last, still with her eyes on his, she passed backwards through the door, and he shut it after her.
“Now to business,” said Colonel Sapt dryly; and Rudolf laughed a little.
Rudolf passed into the room. Sapt went to the king’s apartments, and asked the physician whether his Majesty were sleeping well. Receiving reassuring news of the royal slumbers, he proceeded to the quarters of the king’s body-servant, knocked up the sleepy wretch, and ordered breakfast for the king and the Count of Luzau-Rischenheim at nine o’clock precisely, in the morning-room that looked out over the avenue leading to the entrance to the new chateau. This done, he returned to the room where Rudolf was, carried a chair into the passage, bade Rudolf lock the door, sat down, revolver in hand, and himself went to sleep. Young Bernenstein was in bed just now, taken faint, and the constable himself was acting as his substitute; that was to be the story, if a story were needed. Thus the hours from two to six passed that morning in the castle of Zenda.