But Spain? Spain was the cruellest anxiety for England—Spain with her harbours, her throne at the Gut of the Mediterranean, her fleet. If she could but know the true intentions of Spain! But how? There the English Cabinet was baffled.
The Queen of the Two Sicilies and Emma had met for an afternoon’s singing. Her Majesty was fond to passion of music, and the Ambassadress’s singing was not “reasonable good” for a great lady, but famous throughout Europe. Who could deny a harassed queen her daily refreshment of sweet song, with talk and refreshments to follow? Princess Belmonte, wife of the Neapolitan Ambassador to the Court of Spain, was with them that day, and full of charming chatter of the Spanish Court, His Neapolitan Majesty’s gracious brother, the King; and so forth; and the Queen, Emma seconding, led her out beyond the caution of an ambassadress in case some grains of information could be picked up.
But the lady, though open as a costume de bal, was also guarded with steel and buckram beneath. She favoured them with such gossip as please ladies, no more, and when she spoke to a lady in waiting at the window, the Queen’s burning eye caught Emma’s.
“Would you not sing for us, chère Miladi? The Princess has not heard you of late. (She has brought a letter for the King!) I beseech you to favour us. (My spies know of a cipher letter.) If I might choose it should be the ‘Guardami.’ ”
“Madam, can I refuse Your Majesty anything? I am scarcely in voice to-day. I have been sitting up all night with my husband, who is extremely unwell. (Will the King show it to Acton?) but if it please you! Would you not prefer the ‘Stella mia’?”
“Oh, madam, what you please. (Certainly he will not. Only the Foreign Minister will know.) Then may I beg it now?”
Emma sent for her music, so tremulous that she doubted if she could sing at all. If this was as the Queen suspected, Spain had succumbed to the successes of Napoleon and—what would Nelson, what would all her friends of the Fleet say? She felt it in her to take this laughing young woman by the throat and drag the paper from her bosom. Instead of which the accompanist opened the music, and she sang with her thoughts far otherwhere, but with more brilliancy than usual if with less feeling.
Compliments, smiles, from the Princess Belmonte, and the other ladies; gracious approval from the Queen; Emma’s sweeping obeisance at the door. She trails down the long corridor, and enters her carriage, marvelling what will be the next turn of this strange wheel.
A ragged urchin with impish smile and the long agate eyes of the south offers a bouquet at the window.
“Buy it, Excellency. Buy it, O loveliest. Flowers, flowers, plucked this morning with the dew on them. O Lady, I have eaten nothing to-day. For the pity of the Virgin and Saint Anna, buy, I beseech you.”