The Princess's eyes glistened, and a deep flush overspread her face. This was more than she had ever dared to hope for. This would raise her to affluence, nay, to splendour, once again. No price would be too great to pay for this end, and she told Monsieur Stein so, although she kept down her raptures and stilled her beating heart the while.
"All this, Princess, I can obtain for you," said he; "all this has been promised me, and I have got it in writing. In less than a month the Government will have redeemed its pledge, and in return you shall do us one little favour."
"C'est un trahison, n'est ce pas?" she asked quickly, but without any appearance of shame or anger; "I know it by the price you offer. Well, I am not scrupulous--say on."
"Scarcely that," he replied, evidently emboldened by her coolness; "only a slight exertion of feminine influence, of which no woman on earth has so much at command as yourself. Listen, Princess; in three words I will tell you all. Count de Rohan loves you passionately--madly. You know it yourself;--forgive my freedom; between you and me there must be no secrets. You can do what you will with him."--(He did not see her blush, for she had turned away to put down her cup.)--"He will refuse you nothing. This is your task:--there is another conspiracy hatching against the Government; its plot is not yet ripe, but it numbers in its ranks some of the first men in Hungary. Your compatriots are very stanch; even I can get no certain information. Several of the disaffected are yet unknown to me. Young Count de Rohan has a list of their names; that list I trust to you to obtain. Say, Princess, is it a bargain?"
She was fitting her glove accurately to her taper fingers.
"And the man that you were good enough to say adores me so devotedly, Monsieur," she observed, without lifting her eyes to his face, "what will you do with him? shoot him as you did his cousin in 1848?"
"He shall have a free pardon," replied the police-agent, "and permission to reside on his lands. He is not anxious to leave the vicinity of the Waldenberg, I believe," he added mischievously.
"Soit," responded the Princess, as she rose to put an end to the interview. "Now, if you will hand me my bouquet we will go into the other room."
As he bowed and left her, Monsieur Stein felt a certain uncomfortable misgiving that he had been guilty of some oversight in his game. In vain he played it all again in his own head, move for move, and check for check; he could not detect where the fault lay, and yet his fine instinct told him that somewhere or another he had made a mistake. "It is all that woman's impassible face," he concluded at last, in his mental soliloquy, "that forbids me to retrieve a blunder or detect an advantage. And what a beautiful face it is!" he added almost aloud, as for an instant the official was absorbed in the man.
In the meantime Victor was getting very restless, very uncomfortable, and, not to mince matters, very cross.