“I am not aware,” she said cautiously, “that the Princess has done anything wrong or improper.”
“Indeed?” Rollmar’s face expressed contempt for a mental vision that could not see a thing so obvious. “You think, then, there is nothing wrong at any time, but especially now, on the eve of her betrothal to Prince Ludwig of Drax-Beroldstein, in the Princess indulging in a nocturnal interview with a man in the chapel?”
“The Princess,” Minna demurred, evading a direct answer and summoning her courage, “hates the idea of marrying Prince Ludwig.”
“That,” returned Rollmar coldly, “is a matter which I cannot discuss with you. It is entirely beside the question. What I have to say now merely touches the part you have played in this scandalous affair—and its consequences to you.”
There was an ugly hint in the last words which lost nothing in their pointed emphasis. Poor Minna abruptly ceased to wonder how much her tormentor knew and how he came to know it, in apprehending her own punishment.
“I have abetted nothing scandalous,” was all she could protest, and that feebly enough.
Rollmar gave a shrug. “I hold a different opinion, Countess. The affair would be disreputable enough in a private family; in connection with a Royal house it involves not only dishonour, but treason to the State. That is unquestionable. You probably know the penalty of treason?”
The wretched Minna knew it but too well, since many a case of ministerial vengeance had come under her notice. Such dark events were not of infrequent occurrence and were bound to be common talk, since it was policy not to hush them up too closely. Already she felt herself a dead woman, or at least one for whom liberty was to be but a recollection. It was manifest to her that, from the Minister’s point of view, at least, the affair was sufficiently serious to warrant the most dire measures. To do her justice, her feeling of abject despair was not confined to herself. What would be the result to her mistress of this discovery? Still, her own situation was the more perilous; she recalled a similar case in which all the possessors of a scandalous secret were removed from the face of the earth—how, could be only shudderingly conjectured.
She could but protest her innocence of all wrongful, all treasonable intention. Not a particularly cogent argument to move the stern old man, whose fierce, merciless eyes seemed to shrivel up her protests.
“Call it folly rather than treason, if you please,” he retorted with his pitiless logic; “folly, culpable folly, such as yours, is treason where the State is concerned. An assignation, innocent or otherwise, is common enough, its consequences would be purely domestic in every case but one, the highest. It has been your misfortune, Countess, to allow yourself to be mixed up in that one exception where the consequences might be imperial and widely disastrous.”