Yolanda turned towards him disagreeably. “You always see situations so clearly,” she said, “but before we worry about such small considerations, I have a question to ask you. No doubt you will be glad to tell, and I prefer to ask you rather than Count Visichich or any other of your supporters. Who is the man the Visichiches found it necessary to imprison in their manor?”
For the fraction of a second Prince Conrad lost his amused air of authority. He stared at Yolanda in surprise. I could not tell whether he was a little sorry for her or upset for himself. I knew then that the man, whoever he might be, was no monk.
“’ow did you learn there was such a man?” he asked.
“Will you tell me who he is?” she repeated. I knew she must know who he was, she would not have been so anxious not to talk about him if she had been in any doubt. She was marking time, and making him uncomfortable while she did it.
“I prefer not,” he replied gently.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I merely wanted to make sure,” she said, “whether, as I supposed, you were a party to his imprisonment. I now know you were.” She was smiling; for the first time since I had seen her, showing some human feeling. I heard a footstep in the corridor. A note of triumph came into her voice. “You are right not to answer, our Cousin Conrad,” she said, theatrically. “That was a question whose answer will be most embarrassing to you. No man can be both Prince and bandit forever.”
“Quite true,” Conrad agreed, affably. “The time must come when he will take his rightful place.”
The door opened again, and the servant appeared for an instant to bow low before a monk in a brown habit, with the very unmonklike face we had seen through the ceiling at Visichich manor. The only change was that now he was shaved. Yolanda rose, the other men rose. We followed suit, perforce. Only Maria Lalena remained seated, staring at him as though she were looking at a ghost.
Yolanda’s rich voice almost intoned, “Bela, my son that was dead, is alive again. Bela the King has returned to his throne.” She moved half across the room, giving up her high-backed crimson chair to him. He took it without a glance at her.
“Very good,” he said. “Just the people I wished most to see, and all together, waiting for me. Perhaps, my very hated Cousin Conrad, you will put out your cigarette, since the King has not given you permission to smoke in his presence?”