His desire would be to call at once in person, he added, but, owing to the program arranged for this day and several days to follow, not only each hour but each moment would be officially occupied. These birthday festivities were troublesome, but duly must be done. And then, Leopold repeated (when he had Miss Mowbray’s name and address), the court surgeon and physician would be commanded to attend upon her without delay.
With these words and a chivalrous courtesy at parting, the Emperor was gone, Baron von Lyndal, Grand Master of Ceremonies, and his Baroness having been told off to take care of Miss Mowbray.
In another mood it would have pricked Virginia’s sense of humor to see Baroness von Lyndal’s almost shocked surprise at discovering her to be the daughter of that Lady Mowbray whom she was asked to meet. (Luckily all the letters of introduction had reached their destination, it merely remaining, according to etiquette in Rhaetia, for Lady Mowbray to announce her arrival in Kronburg by sending cards to the recipients.) But Virginia had no heart for laughter now.
She had been on the point of forgetting, until reminded by a dig from the spur of necessity, that she was only a masquerader, acting her borrowed part in a pageant. For the first time since she had hopefully taken it up, that part became detestable. She would have given almost anything to throw it off, and be herself: for nothing less than clear sincerity seemed worthy of this day and the event which crowned it.
Nevertheless, in the vulgar language of proverb which no well brought-up Princess should ever stoop to use, she had made her own bed, and she must lie in it. It would not do for her suddenly to give out to the world of Kronburg that she was not, after all, Miss Mowbray, but Princess Virginia of Baumenburg-Drippe. That would not be fair to the Grand Duchess, who had yielded to her wishes, nor fair to her own plans. Above all, it would not be fair to the Emperor, handicapped as he now was by a debt of gratitude. No; Miss Mowbray she was, and Miss Mowbray she must for the present remain.
Naturally the Grand Duchess fainted when her daughter was brought back with ominous red stains upon the gray background of her traveling dress. But the wound was neither deep nor dangerous. The court surgeon was as consoling as he was complimentary, and by the time that messengers from the palace had arrived with inquiries from the Emperor and invitations to the Emperor’s ball, the mother of the heroine could dispense with her sal volatile.
She had fortunately much to think of. There was the important question of dress for the ball to-morrow night; there was the still more pressing question of the newspapers, which must not be allowed to publish the borrowed name of Mowbray, lest complications should arise; and there were the questions to be asked of Virginia. How had she felt? How had she dared? How had the Emperor looked, and what had the Emperor said?
If it had been natural for the Grand Duchess to faint, it was equally natural that she should not faint twice. She began to believe, after all, that Providence smiled upon Virginia and her adventure; and she wondered whether the Princess’s white satin embroidered with seed pearls, or the silver spangled blue tulle would be more becoming to wear to the ball.
Next day the Rhaetian newspapers devoted columns to the attack upon the Emperor by an anarchist from a certain province (once Italian), who had disguised himself as an official in the employ of the Burgomaster. There were long paragraphs in praise of the lady who, with marvelous courage and presence of mind, had sprung between the Emperor and the assassin, receiving on the arm with which she had shielded Unser Leo a glancing blow from the weapon aimed at the Imperial breast. But, thanks to a few earnestly imploring words written by “Lady Mowbray” to Baron von Lyndal, commands impressed upon the landlord of the hotel, and the fact that Rhaetian editors are not as modern as Americans in their methods, the lady was not named. She was a foreigner and a stranger to the capital of Rhaetia; she was, according to the papers, “as yet unknown.”