THE encounter between Countess Minna and von Ompertz had the effect of making both watcher and watched more circumspect.
The Captain ceased to perambulate the royal precincts so openly, while Minna’s daylight walks were of the most patently innocent kind. So far she played her game shrewdly enough; but it was certainly a dangerous, if not a false move, when she determined on an expedition after dusk to the old sun-dial. The spirit of rebellion had entered strongly into the Princess, and was fanned by her companion from motives of pure roguery as well as for revenge for the fright which the Chancellor had given her. It was to the Princess Ruperta intolerable that her whole life and happiness should be dominated by this cunning old minister, and to be subjected to a system of close espionage was more than her spirit would endure. If the Duke, her father, was weak enough to submit, she would not be so tame: she would let Rollmar see that she was no pawn to be pushed about according to the exigencies of his political game. She wished as dearly as he that the laggard Prince would make his appearance; she would give him an uncomfortable time of it, and delight in upsetting the Chancellor’s plans.
“He is wise to keep away in hiding,” she said resentfully to Minna, “but, for all that, I should love to hear that he had arrived. The Baron should have many a mauvais quart d’heure, I promise you.”
“It would be rare fun,” Minna assented. “How I should enjoy watching the old fox’s face while you were mortifying the vanity of this precious Prince Ludwig. You will surely have a fair field there, dear Highness, for were he not eaten up by self-conceit he would have been here long ago.”
“He has never shown the least sign of interest.” The Princess made a quick gesture of anger. “And I am to marry the pig. I hate him; I hate him, as you shall see, my dear Baron.”
Meanwhile her precious freedom should not be circumscribed. Her feelings should not be coerced. If this hateful marriage, after a stormy wooing, had to take place it was at least hardly to be expected that she should calmly wait, keeping her fancy free, for this very cavalier wooer. The Princess was, as has been seen, a woman of great determination, who could be as cold as ice, nay, colder, for she had the power of remaining at freezing point under the fiercest sun. Still, after all—and no one knew this more shrewdly than did the Baron—she was a woman; her force of passion was none the less strong because it was deeply set. To such a nature her very bringing up had made for waywardness, power in a woman implies caprice, and caprice is none the less absolute because the power is bounded. The road to such a woman’s heart is not direct. They who take the straight path shall find it but leads them to a blank wall, or at least to a fast-barred door. The heart is set, as it were, in the centre of a maze, you may chance upon it by taking a path which seems to lead away from your objective. There is a cunning side inlet; a short, unexpected turn, and lo! the goal is before you.
It was thus with Ludovic von Bertheim. He had caught the Princess’s interest by surprise at the fortune-teller’s; the glamour of a strange adventure was over his personality, the glimpses she had caught of his character, so different from that shown by the young bloods she was used to see about the Court, had captured her fancy, then her heart, which, despite her reputation for coldness, was hungering for love. And love had seemed so far off, so little to be hoped for now that she was to be hand-fasted to a man whom she had never seen, and who seemed bent on showing that he must not be expected to play the lover. Small wonder then if, under the stress of a joyless future and wounded sensibility, she forgot her pride of station and allowed herself to think tenderly of a man who had so suddenly and curiously come into her life. Now, more than ever, did she resent with all the spirit that was in her the manifest way in which she was being used by Rollmar to further his schemes of aggrandisement. That he should wish her to form an alliance of high political importance she could understand; it was, from a statesman’s point of view, reasonable enough; but that he should take upon himself to play the spy on her, to interfere with her personal liberty, was more than she would brook. It was monstrous, and, with a girl of her high spirit, was simply pressing the key which would give forth the note of rebellion.
“It is dangerous, though, Minna,” she said.
“Surely, Highness, you are not beginning to fear that old fox.”
“Not I,” she replied scornfully, “I meant for him, for the Lieutenant.”