“It must be the same girl. And the Emperor has offered her marriage.”
“What? Impossible! But—with the left hand, of course, though even that would be unheard of for a man in his—”
“I swear to your Royal Highness that if he isn’t stopped, he will force her on the Rhaetian people as Empress.”
“Gad! Little Jenny Brett! I didn’t half appreciate her brilliant qualities.”
“Yet I would wager that she appreciated yours.”
The Prince shrugged his shoulders. “I believe she really cared something for me—a month ago.”
“Then she still cares. You are not a man whom a woman can forget, though pique or ambition may lead her to try. I tell you, frankly, I believe that Providence sent your Royal Highness here at this moment, and my best hopes are now pinned on you. You—and no one as well as you—can save the Emperor for a nobler fate. Even when I supposed you a stranger to this lady who calls herself Helen Mowbray, I thought that, if you would consent to meet her and exercise your fascinations, there might be hope of averting the danger from my master. Now, I hope everything. I beg, I entreat, that your Royal Highness will send up your name and ask the lady to see you without delay. She will certainly receive you; and when the Emperor learns that she has done so, it may go far to disillusion him, for—pardon me—your Royal Highness has a great reputation as a lady-killer. Still more valuable would it be, however—indeed, he would be cured of his infatuation forever, if—if—”
“If what?” inquired the young man, tired of the Chancellor’s long windedness and beating about the bush.
“If you could persuade her to go out to your hunting lodge. Then Leopold and Rhaetia would be saved—by you. What could be better, what could be more suitable?”
“What indeed?” echoed the Prince. “For every one concerned,—except for Jenny Brett.”