Königsmark went red and white by turns, with the violent surge of his emotions, and the deep sapphire eyes blazed with wrath when she came at last to the culminating horror of blows endured.
“It is enough, madame,” he cried. “I swear to you, as Heaven hears me, that he shall be punished.”
“Punished?” she echoed, checking in her stride, and looked at him with a smile of sad incredulity. “It is not his punishment I seek, my friend, but my own salvation.”
“The one can be accomplished with the other,” he answered hotly, and struck the cut-steel hilt of his sword. “You shall be rid of this lout as soon as ever I can come to him. I go after him to Berlin to-night.”
The colour all faded from her cheeks, her sensitive lips fell apart, as she looked at him aghast.
“Why, what would you do? What do you mean?” she asked him.
“I will send him the length of my sword, and so make a widow of you, madame.”
She shook her head. “Princes do not fight,” she said, on a note of contempt.
“I shall so shame him that he will have no alternative—unless, indeed, he is shameless. I will choose my occasion shrewdly, put an affront on him one evening in his cups, when drink shall have made him valiant enough to commit himself to a meeting. If even that will not answer, and he still shields himself behind his rank—why, there are other ways to serve him.” He was thinking, perhaps, of Mr. Thynne.
The heat of so much reckless, romantic fury on her behalf warmed the poor lady, who had so long been chilled for want of sympathy, and starved of love. Impulsively she caught his hand in hers.