"Yes, dear," she said gently. "Of course I do think it; but when the gipsy said that, I could not help feeling hopeful, for he was right in everything else he said——"
Then suddenly she took Rosemary's face between her two hands, and she gazed into her eyes with a look of almost fierce intensity in her own, as if she would wrest a secret from the depths of the younger woman's soul.
"Swear to me, Rosemary," she said, and her gentle voice sounded raucous and harsh, "swear to me that there is nothing in the world that you can do to save Philip!"
And Rosemary, returning her gaze, replied steadily:
"I swear to you that it is not in my power to save Philip and Anna. If it were, I would do it."
Even then Elza did not cry. She just sat there quite, quite still, her big, round eyes quite dry, her mouth without a quiver, but sitting there so still, so still, with her beautiful golden hair all round her face, the soft streaks of grey all about her temples, her fine features rigid, her podgy white hands resting on her knees; she looked such a tragic figure of despair that Rosemary could hardly suppress the cry of anguish that rose insistently to her throat.
"And so we can do nothing," Elza said, with a note of quiet finality in her voice.
"Don't say that, dear," Rosemary protested. "Jasper, as a matter of fact, has gone to Bucharest to try and see the King personally. The Roumanian Government owes some gratitude to my husband, as you know. I am quite sure that he will bring strong pressure to bear upon the authorities, and get a full pardon for Philip and Anna on the score of their youth."
But Elza slowly shook her head.
"You don't believe yourself, darling," she said, "in what you say. The children have committed the unpardonable crime of being born Hungarians, and of resenting foreign tyranny in their native land. The King himself would be kind, I am sure, but Bucharest is a long way off, and the bureaucrats over here do not know the meaning of the word 'mercy.'"