“Please sit down, do,” Maria Lalena spoke quickly. “I am afraid you are hurt.”
Yolanda turned to look at her annoyedly. I was glad enough of the opportunity. I sat down, and shoved my stockinged foot under the chair. John sat beside me.
“We should apologise,” he said, “for our appearance. We would not willingly have presented ourselves before your Majesties in such a dishevelled state, but we were, as you know, given no choice. We were under the impression, in fact, that we were being taken to prison.”
Yolanda said “Yes, yes, to be sure,” very stiffly, while she stared at us crossly for having sat down. She could set her stage magnificently, she could play her part with conviction and authority amid insuperable difficulties, but she could not make her audience love her. It was amazing to me that she had been right often enough, and clever enough, to keep her place in spite of all the hatred she stirred up. They were so different, those two women facing us. The person who would take Yolanda’s place must have brains and experience, and Maria Lalena was so young and untried, though she was pretty and appealing. Her eyes were amazing. She was looking at John now as she had looked at a counter of pastries in Paris eight years ago. There was the same hopeful, wistful, long-lashed glance. Quite irresistible. She turned the same look on me, and then dropped her eyes. That was what she used to do about the pastries. Drop her eyes after one lingering, devastating glance, and the family bought them for her.
Yolanda was sitting in silence. She knew how to use the old stage tricks. In a second, from the vantage point of her high backed, red damask chair, she would graciously give us permission to retire.
I spoke before she should have an opportunity. “Your Majesty, we have brought you a message from the Countess Waldek.”
Maria Lalena answered, and jumped from her chair to do it. Even Yolanda sat up a little straighter.
“Oh,” Maria Lalena cried, “oh, where is she? Is she safe?”
Yolanda admonished her in a low voice, sibilant with annoyance. She sat down again.
“Yes,” I answered, “she is quite safe.”