"They cannot do that."
"I think the King himself is so wrong. He hates Nevil, and he has not the least affection for poor little Marie, his granddaughter. It is a dreadful state of things."
I concurred dismally. Yet it was a state of things arising so naturally, so inevitably out of the special circumstances of the case that it seemed almost to forfeit a little of its tragic significance.
"If only she is strong enough to hold out until Saturday!" said my feminine counsellor. "But I am rather afraid. She is quite weak in some ways."
"There is a weakness, isn't there, which is a higher form of strength?"
"Can you mean that she will not be weak if she consents to return to Illyria to marry the Archduke Joseph?"
"She owes a duty to her people."
"She owes a duty to her husband and child."
Thursday ended as it began and Friday brought no solace. The Princess reappeared among us in the afternoon. She was pale and composed, and as the twilight of the January afternoon was gathering, she and Fitz rode out together. The King, at the same hour, walked in the muddy lanes with von Schalk.
"They leave us to-morrow morning at eleven," Mrs. Arbuthnot informed me, "and Sonia has not had her things packed. I believe the worst is over. She would have told me had she decided to go."