Ludwig hated his task, and, coming, as it did, so abruptly in the midst of his happiness, it was trebly repugnant. But the remembrance of that fiendishly murdered woman steeled him, more than would ever his own treatment, against an unwise mercy. It would be monstrous, he knew, and a gross abuse of his prerogative to let this ravening human wolf live to devour his subjects.
“You know the penalty of your crimes,” he said, with stern dignity, “and can hope for nothing less. It is death.”
Irromar bowed his head. “I do not complain. Fate has served you well, Ludwig. I accept the penalty which would have been yours but for the mischance of an hour. As I have lived my life, so will I die my death.”
Thus he went out to his prison and the scaffold.
“I shall never forgive you for running all those unnecessary risks for me,” Ruperta said to Ludwig. “I am sure if your subjects had known all your fool-hardiness, sir, they would have pronounced you unfit to govern them soberly, and would never have allowed you to depose Ferdinand.”
“You would not have cared for me, my glorious love,” he replied fondly, “if I had come in sober, formal state to take possession of you, to have the bargain paid over on the counter of the banker, Rollmar.”
“Tell me the truth, sir,” she insisted, her love hardly kept out of sight by her show of peremptoriness, “you came secretly like that to see whether you approved of the bargain. Had I not pleased you, it would have been so easy for Lieutenant von Bertheim to have slipped away again and left no one the wiser.”
“You are wrong, sweetheart. I knew there was no chance of that. For I had been given a description of you, as good a portrait as words could ever hope to paint of one that beggars description——”
“Ludovic!”
“And also a hint that you might rebel against being made a pawn in Rollmar’s political game.”