"I am eternally indebted to your excellency," she said. "To-morrow evening I shall blow you forty thousand kisses."
At the words "forty thousand" his excellency grew red. He turned on his heel, and for the future Eveline was relieved from his attentions; but it was also quite certain that she had lost all chance of an engagement at the Opera-house. She might sing like a nightingale, but her petition would never be signed.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BONDAVARA RAILWAY
The Bondavara Railway was begun. Prince Waldemar and his followers, the bears, were crushed—there are always people who die of hunger in the midst of a plenteous harvest.
Prince Waldemar met his noble relative, Prince Theobald, at the Jockey Club. Their encounter was hardly a friendly one, considering their close relationship.
Said Prince Waldemar: "You have chosen to put yourself at the head of my enemies. You have done your utmost to trump my best card. You have allied yourself with that man Kaulmann, with whom I am on bad terms. I sought your granddaughter in marriage; you promised she should be my wife, and then you sent her away from Vienna. You have invented all manner of pretexts to keep her at Pesth, and now the secret is out—she is betrothed to Salista. I had a fancy for a pretty little woman, and just to prevent my having her you invite her to your palace and forbid her to receive my visits. Worse than all, you have given over your only unmortgaged property, Bondavara, to a swindling company, who want to set themselves over me; and you have become their president. You have schemed and jockeyed the government into giving the guarantee for a railway that won't pay two per cent. You haven't an idea how you are implicated in these transactions. I pity you—for I have always felt esteem for you—and I intend to set myself the task of regulating your affairs some day. Meantime take care, for if I succeed in upsetting the human pyramid upon whose shoulders you stand the greatest fall will be yours."
Of all this long harangue Prince Theobald only gathered the fact that Angela had chosen the Marquis Salista for her husband, and had never written to tell him. She let him hear it from another.
The Bondavara Railway was being pressed forward; it was nearly finished. There was no further need for a woman's black-diamond eyes. They had done their work. One day Eveline visited her husband. Felix received her with apparent satisfaction.
"I have come," she said, "to ask you a question. Prince Theobald has been for some days so sad; it is melancholy to see his distress. Have you any idea of its cause?"