"The Marchioness Caldariva? Is she here?"
"To be sure. The prince never travels without her."
"But what motive had she thus to injure herself and, perhaps, prevent her marriage with the prince?"
"Motive enough for a woman," replied Vajdar,—"jealousy."
"Jealousy!" repeated Blanka, in astonishment.
But one glance at the face confronting her was a sufficient explanation. That handsome face, smiling with triumph and self-confidence, made her tingle with wrath and scorn from head to foot. This man, it appeared, was impudent enough to play the rôle of suitor to his patron's wife, and also, at the same time, to pose as the object of a sentimental attachment on the part of that patron's mistress. And he smiled complacently the while.
"Sir," resumed the princess, whom that smile so irritated that she resolved to use her deadly weapon without further delay, "I appreciate your devotion to my cause, but I cannot deceive you. I must not encourage hopes that would end only in disappointment. Let this matter not be referred to again between us."
"But how if it were imposed by the prince as the indispensable condition of a peaceful settlement of your relations with him?"
"I cannot believe that such is the case," replied Blanka, calmly. "But however that may be, I cannot bind myself by any promise to you, knowing as I do that the question of matrimony between us is one that the canons of the Romish Church forbid us to consider."
"Ah, you have been studying ecclesiastical law, I see,—an error like that of the sick man that reads medical works. You undoubtedly have in mind the tenth paragraph, which forbids a son to marry his father's divorced wife; but you should have read farther, where it is declared that a marriage pronounced null and void by the clemency of the Pope is as if it never had been, and thus offers no hindrance to a subsequent union."