"My God! Then I am too late! I thought I might give a half-hour's warning! We have been betrayed!"
"So it is evident. What do you know of it? Come, my dear Count, sit here on this log, and tell me."
The two sat down together at one side of the doorway, outside the tower.
"I got word from—a certain lady," began Von Romberg, in a half breathless, heart-broken voice, "to come to her at once, as she was suddenly at the point of death. This was a short time before I was to have started for the meeting this afternoon. When I entered her room I found her perfectly well, but in great trepidation. She said I must not leave her house till night. When I insisted on going, now that I had found she was not ill, she broke down, and told me everything. You must know she is the—she is on close terms with the secretary of Rothenstein, minister of police. Through this secretary she had learned that we have all been terribly tricked. Our conspiracy was instigated with the Landgrave's own authority! It was an idea of old Rothenstein's, and the villain who carried it out was Mesmer!"
"But,—I don't understand. Why should the Landgrave authorize a conspiracy against himself?"
"In order to have a reason, in the eyes of his subjects and of other powers, for removing certain objectionable persons from his way. You are an Englishman, St. Valier a Frenchman. Without a good pretext he would not dare have you two imprisoned, lest your governments might call him to account. Moreover, if he took any arbitrary step against yourself, the people might think he was secretly angry at you for having saved the Landgravine's life. And then, this woman told me, there is a lady whose hatred the Landgrave does not wish to incur, and he would incur it by causing your destruction; but now it will appear that you have brought destruction on yourself by plotting high treason."
"What a diabolical scheme!"
"You see, my dear Wetheral, we, who have supposed ourselves to be conspirators, are the ones who have really been conspired against. All was perfectly arranged. Even the choice of officers by lot was so managed by Mesmer, who conducted the drawing, that you and St. Valier were designated."
"The base-hearted Landgrave would remove both her protectors! But what proof will there be against us, beyond Mesmer's testimony? And will not Mesmer's testimony betray the Landgrave's whole design?"
"Mesmer will give no testimony. They have proof sufficient, of the kind they desire. This very afternoon they found the signed compact in your room; they knew from Mesmer exactly where it was hidden. Mesmer will not even appear among the accused. It was part of the plan that he should be allowed to escape, and to stay out of the country till the others were disposed of. To that escape and absence, the rest of us would attribute his not being punished with us,—and not to his having sold us to the Landgrave. Thus the world was to be kept from knowing the despicable part this wretch had played. And now mark how little these villains trust one another. Fearful, I suppose, lest the Landgrave would after all let him suffer, in order to make sure of his silence, Mesmer stipulated that he should be allowed to escape at the moment of arrest. Mesmer once inside a prison, he doubtless thought, the Landgrave might consider a dungeon—or a grave—the safest place for a man who possessed the secret of so detestable a transaction. And, to keep his treachery the more hidden, he provided that the arrest and his apparent escape should be entrusted to an officer not acquainted with him."