Then the Princess called him; and when the only voice able, hitherto, to touch a soft chord in his heart, struck now a jarring dissonance, the fury passed; and again he was the man of cold, calm hate and ruthless purpose. So he turned aside, and to his enemies—her and the foreigner—deliberating how to make his play quickly, yet naturally and with seeming inadvertence. The faintest blunder would be fatal with Courtney watching; Armand he despised.
And at Dehra’s sudden question, he had almost laughed aloud—was it always to be so easy! But he bound his face to his part, and made his answer, and went his way; whistling softly, and all unknowingly, a little song, that a slender, sinuous woman, with raven hair and dead-white cheek, had sung to him in the North.
And when, presently, it came to him whose the song was, and where he had heard it, he laughed gaily.
“An omen!” he said aloud, “an omen! On to Lotzenia—and a dead Archduke.”
X
A QUESTION OF VENEER
The Archduke Armand tossed the end of his fourth cigar into the grate and looked at the big clock in the corner. It was only a bit after eleven, and that was, he knew by experience, the blush of the evening at the American Embassy, where there were no women-folk to repress the youngsters nor to necessitate the closing of the house at conventional hours. Courtney had only bachelors in his official family; and he housed them all with him in the big residence on Alta Avenue, and gave them free rein to a merry life, fully assured they would not abuse the liberty; he had known every one of them as boys, and their fathers before them.
The Archduke reached over and pressed a button.
“Bring me a cap and a light cape,” he said to the servant;—“and a stick.”
The man went out, and Armand crossed to a window and drew aside the curtain.
“Put them on a chair,” he said without looking around, as the door opened again. “You may go.”