“For France—Paris in particular.”
“Very well—prefer your request through the regular channel, as any other officer, and I will grant it;” and with a perfunctory nod, she resumed her reading.
“I am permitted to withdraw?” he asked.
“You are always permitted to withdraw,” she answered, without looking up.
“I like your spirit, Dehra,” he laughed; “you and I would make an unconquerable pair; it is a pity you won’t be my queen.”
She pointed toward the door.
“Go, sir,” she ordered, her voice repressed to unusual softness; “go! nor present yourself again until you have received permission.”
And with a smile and a bow, he went; backing slowly from the room, in an aggravation of respect.
He had not come to the Palace for leave to go to France, or any where else; where he wanted to go, and when, he went. But his plans required that he be absolutely free and untrammeled, and so he had done this to insure himself against being ordered suddenly to some military duty that might hamper his movements even slightly. And his visit had been doubly successful—he had the permission, and in such a form that he was given the utmost liberty, and he had also learned the Regent’s real attitude toward him, and that even with her it would be a fight without quarter. What the American would make it, the dead bodies in the De Saure house had indicated as plainly as spoken words—and, indeed, as such he knew they had been deliberately intended.
As he passed one of the windows in the corridor, he caught, far off amid the trees, the sheen of a white gown; he paused, and presently he recognized Mlle. d’Essoldé. With a smile of sudden purpose, he went quickly down a private stairway that opened on the Park below the marble terrace, and, eyes on the white gown, that showed at intervals through the bushes, he sauntered toward it.