"Fräulein Althea will explain everything," and with that I went off to think over the whole tangle.
CHAPTER VI
A STROKE OF LUCK
As soon as I reached my room I sat down to look the difficulties of the problem before me fairly in the face. And formidable enough they were.
The interview with Althea had shifted the axis of everything. What I had deemed the mere comedy of the Imperial marriage--a matter which a few words of explanation would set right instantly--had developed into a grave drama in which Althea's future was imperilled. And with that was intertwined my own happiness.
Her confidence in telling me everything so frankly, no less than the hundred little touches with which it had all been told, had at once raised my own hopes of being able to win her if only I could clear away the tangle, and at the same time had convinced me of her belief that the forces arrayed against us were too formidable to be overcome.
I did not make the mistake of underrating them. This summons to Count von Felsen was a proof that I must reckon with powerful Court influences; and that if I was not to be beaten, I must find some means of defeating not only von Felsen but his influential father also.
That meant that I must be able to secure the pardon for Althea's erratic father which was to be the price of her consent to the proposed marriage.
For such a purpose it would not be enough to rouse old Ziegler's fury against von Felsen on the score of the latter's contemplated refusal to marry Hagar. Even if that marriage took place and von Felsen were thus unable to marry Althea, the latter's case would not be helped. Her father would remain unpardoned, and she herself and Chalice would be in the same danger.
I must dig deeper than that. I had appreciated this when Althea had been telling me her story, and my thought had been to get von Felsen so completely into my power that I could make terms even with his father.