'Has she? She is often absurd in her ideas. But we need not talk of her. To turn to something pleasanter, do you know that I have just persuaded Major Counsellor to come to us at Sagan?'
Rallywood instantly perceived that the three or four days at the old frontier castle might prove to be a singularly interesting period, and regretted that he was not to be a guest also.
'And you are coming too, are you not?' went on Madame de Sagan, with a note in her voice that Rallywood was learning to dread.
'I fancy not. Unziar and Adiron have been mentioned.'
'Yes, Anthony Unziar, because he is my cousin, and for the sake of Valerie. Also Captain Colendorp. I do not like him, he is always black and sneering, but the Count chose him yesterday, and then I suggested yourself. They were rather doubtful about you, but Baron von Elmur consented. And I was so glad—Jack!'
The friendship had been progressing, it will be perceived, during the last three weeks. But Rallywood made no immediate response, being absorbed in digesting the information she had given him. That the German minister should be permitted to dictate the guests for the three days' festivities at the Castle was in itself a pregnant fact. But further, the Germans had never before possessed old Sagan's confidence; his dislike of the encroaching mammoth, whom the whole little nation feared, was notorious. This new departure was therefore ominous.
'I had no notion that Baron von Elmur liked me any better than my countrymen,' said Rallywood aloud.
'Ah, no, perhaps not; but now, you will understand, he wishes to please me!' Countess Isolde answered with an air of mysterious importance.
'He is not alone in wishing to do that,' returned Rallywood, ashamed even as he uttered it, of the meaningless compliment.
'Jack,' she said, with a proud raising of her blonde head, 'you are my friend, and of course you wish to please me. But everyone will want to stand well with me some day—when I have power—and then you shall see what I will do for those whom I wish to please!'