“I do not understand, Ferdinand, why you persist in under-rating your enemy; it’s the climax of bad generalship. The American may be reckless and a bit headstrong, but assuredly he is not a fool.”
The Duke shrugged his shoulders. “He can fight, I grant you—but he can’t scheme nor plot—nor detect one, though it’s as evident as the sun.”
“And yet—” she waved her hand toward the Epsau—“it is he you’re fighting for the Crown.”
“Luck!” he scoffed—“a dotard King, a damn Huzzar uniform, and a silly girl.”
“Is his luck any the less now, with the girl Regent of Valeria?” she asked.
“Possibly not,” he said; “and hence another reason for the mountains—she won’t be with him there.”
She gave it up—she had tried repeatedly, but it was impossible, it seemed, to arouse him to Armand’s real ability—when hate rides judgment, reason lies bound and gagged.
“Why should the Governor of Dornlitz go to far off Lotzenia?” she asked.
He glanced around the room suspiciously; then scribbled a line in pencil on his cuff and held it over to her.
She read it, and looked at him in puzzled interrogation.