"I place this woman under arrest to you," continued the King. "You will keep her in solitary confinement, so far as is consistent with her kind treatment. Above all, you will let no one see her, and you will produce her person when called upon. Kindly draft a warrant, and I will sign it at once. I believe my orders are plain?" he added, as the High Constable hesitated.
"Perfectly," moaned Dolabella lugubriously, and sat down to write. Meanwhile Penelophon, who at last was beginning dimly to grasp that her angel was really Trecenito himself, was gazing from one to the other in hopeless wonder without speaking. The warrant was done. Kophetua signed it, drew his burnouse about him, and left the room without another word. Penelophon looked after him wistfully, and then sat down and began to cry.
"I am very sorry, sir," she said, "to be here, if you do not want me."
"There, there! my dear," said the soft-hearted General petulantly. "There is no need to cry. It is no fault of yours. Only you place me in a very painful position. You cannot understand, because you do not know Madame Dolabella. She is a most charming motherly person, but unhappily a woman to whom it will be an extremely delicate task to explain why I, a father of a family, am holding a tête-à-tête in my study the first thing in the morning with a corpse—or what is a corpse to all intents and purposes, only worse. She is not so used to that kind of thing as some people. I must get you a more decent dress at once, and some breakfast. You look very hungry." And therewith the General gathered the skirts of his flowered dressing-gown around him and shuffled off in his slippers, carefully locking the door behind him.
Kophetua reached his apartments in no enviable frame of mind. He was angry with the General and angry with himself. He felt it was a piece of cowardice to compel his Minister to undertake a duty he was afraid of himself. He was determined to provide for Penelophon elsewhere as soon as possible. But how was it to be done? If General Dolabella would not accept his assurance of the girl's innocence and danger, who would? It was impossible to explain the case to any one. To begin with, he was heartily ashamed of the whole adventure, and then such heavy considerations of state were involved in it. It must entail, in the first place, the unpleasant confession that he was not King in his own dominions. The beggars had been suffered to grow into an uncontrollable power; and, until he could concert measures with the general staff for the concentration of a considerable force in the capital, it was clear that the subject must not be mentioned, especially as there was the further complication of Turbo, and the extraordinary part he had played in the matter. It was absolutely necessary to know what position the Chancellor would take before any move could be made; and how he was to arrive at that Kophetua could not for the life of him think.
It was certainly a situation, and one which would require all his statesmanship to deal with. At last, he admitted, he was face to face with a difficulty of the kind he had longed for all his life. He was aware of a great danger, a great wrong in the state which must be remedied; yet, so he argued to himself, it was impossible to enjoy the position because it was so mixed up with ridiculous personal considerations. Had it only been a plain question of politics, he felt he would have been equal to it, and would have rejoiced in grappling with its difficulties. As it was, he would have given anything if he had only stayed at home that night; and as he cast himself exhausted on his bed for a little rest, there was no one he hated so much as beautiful Mlle de Tricotrin, who had been clever enough to wheedle him into making such a fool of himself for the mere pleasure of winning her good opinion. Whatever happened, he determined she should not know he had been weak enough to act on the advice he had allowed her to give, and so afford her a still better hold on him than she had already obtained by his stupid confidences.
CHAPTER IX. IN THE QUEEN'S GARDEN.
"What sudden chance is this? quoth he,