The messenger set off, and the issue soon followed.
While Louis was reading these dispatches, he received a summons from Elizabeth, to attend her immediately. He took the packet that was for Her Majesty, and proceeded to the Altheim apartments. The Empress was there, but she hardly noticed him when he entered the room. She had caught a glimpse of his face as he approached; and the sight of its seeming nobleness incensed her the more against his actual dishonour.
She gave no credence to the story that had been told her of his father's insincerity. She knew the slanderous inventions of envy, and she confided, without a shadow of doubting, in the friend she had trusted from her youth. But for the delinquency of his son, she had ocular demonstration; and her indignation was hardly to be repressed.
Louis presented the Queen's and his father's letters. Elizabeth commanded him to read them. He obeyed without remark, though with an unsteady voice, as he uttered communications he knew were so hostile to her expectation. She listened in speechless amazement, first to the one and then to the other. When he had finished, she took them from his hand, and turning them round in agitated silence, examined their seals and writing.
"It is his hand!" cried she, in a tone, from which the convictions in her bosom had rifled all its sweetness. Then turning to Louis, with all her lately suppressed wrath, flashing from her eyes, "It is meet that a false tongue should have read such false language! Louis de Montemar you are a traitor to me and mine, and your father is the same. He abets his treacherous son, to the ruin of a name, of fifty years' unblemished honour"
Louis was not less astonished at this charge, than the Empress had been at the communication which aroused it. But attributing her displeasure, to a suspicion that he had wrought on his father to influence the Queen to prevent his marriage, after the momentary shock of his, first surprise, he calmly and respectfully answered her;—"that he was as faithful to all his bonds, made under the sanction of Her Majesty, as he believed, were the dictates of his father's heart. He regarded his promises to her, and his engagements to the Countess Altheim, as now too sacred to be broken by him, even at the command of his sovereign."
"Indeed?" Answered Elizabeth, hardly attempting to conceal her scornful doubt of his sincerity.
Her manner amazed him; it was so unlike the aspect of fair interpretation, with which she usually discussed a dubious subject.
"And you will marry the Countess Altheim?" continued she.
"Assuredly, Madam."