The Chancellor’s usually immobile features gave perceptible token of his surprise. His bushy brows raised the merest trifle, and his keen black eyes widened.
“His story was, I must confess, not altogether satisfactory, your Royal Highness,” he answered, quietly; “it was, I may say, lacking in detail.”
“I would suggest,” continued Grey, in a tone equally repressed, “that you question him in the line I have indicated.”
The Chancellor bowed.
“I have to thank you,” he said, gravely. “I shall do so. That is very certain.”
Grey arose and Count von Ritter got to his feet instantly. The American stood for a moment in indecision, very tall, very erect. There was no denying that he looked every inch the Prince. Whether to declare that he was not he hurriedly debated. Meanwhile the Chancellor was still striving to detect the madness of which Lindenwald had spoken. To each question he had given the most searching mental scrutiny; to each gesture, to each intonation he had paid the closest heed, but he had discovered practically no indication of the malady charged. With Grey’s next utterance, however, all the fabric of his assurance fell crumbling.
“Count von Ritter,” he said—he had been for a moment gazing out through the window at the varied landscape now dimming with the dusk, but as he spoke he turned and faced the Chancellor—“Count von Ritter, I can delay no longer in confiding to you a matter so grave that I scarcely know how to frame it in words. May I ask you to again be seated?” And he waved his hand towards the settee from which the Count had risen.
The Chancellor seated himself without speaking, and Grey resumed his place in the chair near him.
“The reason I have asked you what I have,” continued he, speaking slowly and with more than his usual deliberation, “is that I have been—I was about to say astounded, but that is too weak a word—I have been stunned and dumfounded by the proved credulity of a nation which has the reputation, next to Russia, of possessing the most astute diplomats in all Europe. That a government so fortified could be tricked into placing its sceptre in the hands of an American citizen, whose ancestry shows no trace of Budavian blood and whose antecedents are an open book, seems out of all reason; and yet it is precisely what you and your confrères, Count, have, as is now conclusively evidenced, been led into.”
Upon the Chancellor’s face was an expression which Grey could not fathom. He was neither startled nor incensed. There was, indeed, just the faintest suspicion of amusement in his keen black eyes, mingled with a spirit of kindly indulgence.