It would be impossible to believe that that countenance could ever look on the thing it feared.
Aurora sighed; in her heart she admitted that she had never dealt yet with a man of that quality; it would be the greater triumph to make him swerve, if only for a second, from his inhuman fortitude.
The next time the King of Sweden went abroad he found himself some miles from the village, and in a narrow road face to face with a horse-woman who took off her traveling mask and revealed the lovely features of Aurora von Königsmarck. “Now will you speak to me, sire?” she asked gravely, almost coldly.
At least he looked at her; she directly barred his path and he could not have turned, as he had done before, without glancing at her; his steady blue eyes stared at her with calm repugnance.
She was wrapped in a heavy white horseman’s cloak, with gray fur gauntlets and a black beaver hat; her bright curls fell into the heavy folds of the cloth, and her face looked pale and delicate as a snowdrop above her winter attire; she rode a fine black horse, and her saddle and harness were ornamented, in the Polish fashion, with brilliant colors of red, yellow, and blue.
“I am Aurora von Königsmarck,” she added, in the same tone; her soft eyes were steady as those that gazed at her so coldly.
“Madame, I recognized you—there is no other lady would trouble to set herself in my path,” replied the King.
“Your Majesty is greatly to be feared and greatly to be admired,” said Aurora. “Do you not wonder at my courage in venturing to address you, sire?”
“You consider yourself invincible, Countess,” he replied, “therefore your courage is only a sense of security.”
She was studying him eagerly under the broad lids that drooped so indifferently over her brilliant eyes; her purpose had gone into the background of her mind; she was not thinking of him as the King of Sweden who held the fate of her master in his hand, but as a man who might or might not be won, and she noted his size, his fairness, the severity of his dress, his curious face, his colorless voice with a growing sense of antipathy and hopelessness.