“Indeed, no,” he returned, ignoring, in his unruffled way, any significance in the speech. “Your health, gracious Princess, means happiness to all your father’s subjects and surely to yourself. And it is your happiness for which with all my ability and experience I unceasingly strive. Only be convinced of that, dear Highness, and let me——”
The sound of a shot broke the stillness of the night-shrouded park. Ruperta turned quickly in the direction whence it had come.
“What was that?” she exclaimed, in a voice which foreboding filled with dread.
“It is nothing,” Rollmar answered with a shrug, “which need concern your Highness.”
She was regarding him searchingly, her eyes full of a fearful suspicion. “A pistol shot under the very palace walls. Surely——” She stopped as though unable to control her voice. Her lips were trembling and her face, in the light from the window, was white.
“May I beg you to go in, Highness?” the Baron repeated, extending his arm to keep open the window.
In that moment the cold, statuesque beauty was transformed in a fashion that startled even the imperturbable Chancellor. Her face flushed and her eyes were alight with bitterness and anger.
“I know now,” she said hotly, “why you were anxious for me to go in, what this chill air of yours meant. It was to get me out of the way of your dastardly act, your fiendish work. I know. You have killed the man whom you have been hunting down so atrociously; assassin, vile murderer that you are. And you dare, hypocritical wretch, to talk of my health. I will go and see your work, and if it be as I suspect, I swear before Heaven you shall bitterly rue it!”
Rollmar stepped before her. “Princess, this is madness. You must not go. You are wrong.”
“Liar!” she flashed out at him passionately, the flood of her anger keeping back the waters of desolation that were ready to flow over her soul. “Show me that I am wrong. Take me there. Prove it. Ah, you dare not! But I will see——”