While he poured it, Hedwig was thinking. Was it possible that Nikky, of every one, should have been chosen to carry to Karl the marriage arrangements? What an irony! What a jest! It was true there was a change in him. He looked subdued, almost sad.
“To Karnia?” she asked, when Prince Ferdinand William Otto had again left the room. “Officially?”
“Not—exactly.”
“Where, in Karnia?”
“I ended,” Nikky confessed, “at Wedeling.”
Hedwig gazed at him, her elbows propped on the tea-table. “Then,” she said, “I think you know.”
“I know, Highness.”
“And you have nothing to say?”
Nikky looked at her with desperate eyes. “What can I say, Highness? Only that—it is very terrible to me—that I—” He rose abruptly and stood looking down at her.
“That you—” said Hedwig softly.