'As your majesty commands!' said Siquier, grating his teeth and proceeding to the execution of the unwelcome commission.
'If the lord has remitted ten thousand shekels to us,' said Charles, turning graciously to Arwed, 'surely we can remit a trifling debt to our fellow men;--can we not, my dear captain?'
'Hail to the hero who knows how to pardon as well as to conquer!' exclaimed Arwed with enthusiasm.
'No flattery!' cried Charles, stamping angrily. 'I know that it was fairly meant, but I do not like it.'
He departed. Arwed leaned against the breastwork and observed the trains of Danish prisoners who were being escorted into the camp. Then glancing proudly upon the blood-besprinkled place he had conquered--and afterwards towards the east, where Stockholm lay;--he sighed, 'had but Georgina seen me!'
CHAPTER V.
Brightly shone the light of chandelier and gueridon through the plate glass windows of the royal palace on the Ritterholm, and most beautifully was its brilliancy reflected by the quiet waters of the Malar lake. The princess Ulrika Eleonore, of Hesse, gave an assembly and card patty--and the variously adorned nobility floated through the gilded rooms, soothing, caressing, deceiving, calumniating, fondling and boring each other. Behind the curtains of one of the most retired windows leaned the affectionate Georgina, gazing with anxious interest over the lake towards the Suedermalm, where in quiet obscurity lay before her the place where she had met and parted with her lover. Near her sat the princess, with the governor, Baron Taube, and the elder Gyllenstierna, at a card table.
'Is there any news from Norway?' asked Ulrika, shuffling the cards.
'From Armfelt's corps,' answered Taube, 'we have been a long time without intelligence,--but, as a friend writes me, the king has taken an important battery before Frederickshall.'
'It is well that some one yet holds correspondence in Sweden, said Ulrika with bitterness, hastily dealing the cards. 'My husband is not permitted to write openly upon the affairs of the campaign, and of the communications of my brother nobody in the capital is permitted to have a glimpse;--and least of all myself, who have the misfortune to be a woman.'