“I thank your Royal Highness for the honor you suggest, and nothing could give me greater pleasure, if I had not a suggestion to venture in place of yours, which I believe may suit you better. I think I know of what you wish to talk with me, and I desire the same, while the business I have most at heart—”
“Ah, your business is my business, then?”
“I hope you may so consider it. In any case it is business which must be carried through now or never, and is of life and death importance to those whom it concerns. How it’s to be done, or whether done at all, may depend on you, if you consent to interest yourself; and it could not be in more competent hands. If I’d been given my choice of an assistant, out of the whole world, I should have chosen your Royal Highness.”
“This sounds like an adventure.”
“It may be an adventure, and at the same time an act of justice.”
“Good. Although it was not in search of an adventure that I came to you, any more than it was the hope of game which brought me on a sudden impulse to my little hunting lodge, still, I trust I have always the instinct of a sportsman.”
“I am sure of that; and I have the less hesitation in enlisting your good-will, because it happens that your bird and mine can be killed with one shot.”
“Chancellor, you excite my curiosity.”
The old man smiled genially; but under the bristling brows glowed a flame as of the last embers in a dying fire. “Up-stairs,” said he, “is a pretty woman; a beauty. She claims the name of Helen Mowbray, though her right to it is more than disputable. Her love affairs threaten a public scandal.”
“Ah, you are not the first one who has spoken of this pretty lady since I crossed the frontier this morning,” exclaimed the young man, flushing. He paused and bit his lip, before going on, as if he wished to think, or regain self-control. But at last he laughed, not altogether lightly. “So, the lady most talked about for the moment in all Rhaetia, is under the same roof with me.”