Ompertz bowed. “It is well, Excellency. I have hardly bungled this time. These men have seen him dead. One shot was enough.”
The Chancellor glanced for corroboration at the Italians who bowed with a word of confirmation. “Good,” he said. “I will see what further orders are needful. Captain von Ompertz, you may report yourself at my bureau at ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”
As the soldier bowed and turned away, Rollmar made a sign to one of the Italians, and, as he came near, whispered a hurried word to him. The man nodded, and then the two went off by the way Ompertz had taken, leaving the Chancellor standing alone in keen thought.
Ruperta, followed fearfully by Minna, had reached the pavilion and it was not until her foot was on the threshold that she stopped, sick and faint at heart, not daring to look in. But her pause was in silence, save for her quick breathing; the cry of her heart found no utterance. Then a desperate longing to know the worst nerved her to look in, and she saw the room was empty. Scarcely daring to trust her eyes, she signed to Minna and went in. The thing she dreaded was not there; the two women stood and looked into each other’s face in wonder. Then there was the sound of a step at the door. If it were Rollmar——. Ruperta went quickly to it, and gave a great gasp of joy as she was clasped in her lover’s arms.
“Ah, my love, my dear love!” she murmured. Then, when their kisses allowed speech, he told her in a few words what had happened.
“You are mad to stay here,” she said, holding him fast nevertheless.
“How can I go?” he protested. “Ah, if you only were content to marry Prince——”
She shook her head impatiently. “That is now farther from me than ever,” she declared. “That shall never be, I swear to you, my love.”
At last she made him go, saying she would let him run no more risks for her sake, yet doubting how they should cease. And he assured her that he feared nothing, that with a love like theirs all must be well. And that made her sad, knowing well how experience was against that comfortable hope and that love counts as a very minus quantity against State policy.
Nevertheless, when she went back to the Palace, the Chancellor, watching for her with grim expectation, was not a little puzzled at what he saw in her face.