Poor old Lorenz was wrestling with his enemy gout, it appeared, and wished for Egon’s immediate presence.
Such a summons could not be neglected. Egon’s whole future depended upon his half-brother’s caprice, he hinted to the Baroness in asking leave to desert her pleasant party for a few hours. So of course she sent the Chancellor her regrets, with the Baron’s; and Egon went off charged with a friendly message from the Emperor as well.
When the Captain of Cavalry had set out from Lyndalberg to Schloss Breitstein by the shortest way—across the lake in a smart little motor-boat—promising to be back in time for dinner and a concert, the Baroness spent all her energy in getting up an impromptu riding-party, which would give Leopold the chance of another tête-a-tête with Miss Mowbray.
Already many such chances had been arranged, so cleverly as not to excite gossip; and if the flirtation (destined by the hostess to disgust Leopold with his Chancellor’s matrimonial projects) did not advance by leaps and bounds, it was certainly not the fault of Baroness von Lyndal.
“Egon has been told to use his eyes and ears for all they’re worth at Lyndalberg, and now he’s called upon to hand in his first report,” she said to herself, when the younger von Breitstein was off on his mission across the lake.
But for once, at least, the “Chancellor’s Jackal” was wronged by unjust suspicion. He arrived at Schloss Breitstein ignorant of his brother’s motive in sending for him, though he shrewdly suspected it to be something quite different from the one alleged.
The Chancellor was in his study, a deep windowed, tower room, with walls book-lined nearly to the cross-beamed ceiling. He sat reading a budget of letters when Egon was announced, and if he were really ill, he did not betray his suffering. The square face, with its beetling brows, eyes of somber fire, and forehead impressive as a cathedral dome, showed no new lines graven by pain.
“Sit down, Egon,” he said, abruptly, tearing in half an envelope stamped with the head of Hungaria’s King. “I’ll be ready for you in a moment.”
The young man took the least uncomfortable chair in the room, which from his point of view was to say little in its favor; because the newest piece of furniture there, has been made a hundred years before the world understood that lounging was not a crime. Over the high, stone mantel hung a shield, so brightly polished as to fulfil the office of a mirror, and from where Egon sat, perforce upright and rigid, he could see himself vignetted in reflection.