Here, if you please, was the scion of a reigning royal family risking as pretty a scandal as one could well imagine—and all for love! Given a few more days of life, and he would have jeopardized his right of succession and set half-a-dozen European chancelleries by the ears—and all for love! But for his untimely end, that poor, pretty creature would have joined her life to his, consummating at one stroke her freedom from the intolerable conditions of existence with Victor and a diplomatic convulsion which might only too easily have precipitated all Europe into a great war—and all for lawless love!
So once more in history Death had served well the interests of public morality.
After a year these letters alone survived ...
How they had survived, what hands had collected and secreted them, and for what purpose, intrigued the imagination no end. Lanyard inclined to credit Princess Sofia with the indiscretion of saving these souvenirs of a grande passion that had almost made history. There was the sentimental motive to account for such action, and another: the satisfaction of knowing she had concrete proof of her intention to treat Victor as he had treated her.
Then somehow the painting must have passed out of her possession; and in all likelihood she had made frantic and awkward efforts to regain it which had aroused the suspicions of Victor; with the sequel of that afternoon....
Lanyard’s speculations were interrupted by the peremptory telephone. Without premonition he picked up the combination receiver and transmitter. But his memory was still so haunted by echoes of that delightful voice which he had heard in the auction room, he couldn’t entertain any doubt that he heard it now.
“Are you there?” it said “Will you be good enough to put me through to Monsieur Lanyard?”
The inspiration to mischief was instantaneous: Lanyard replied promptly in accents as much unlike his own as he could manage:
“Sorry, ma’am; Mister Lanyard dined hout to-night. Would there be any message, ma’am?”
“Oh, how annoying!”