“And you have no idea who he is?” Udo asked incredulously.
The Baron shook his head. “None. The fact is not flattering to our system, but this, you see, is an affair which must be handled with the greatest delicacy and secrecy. Should a breath of scandal reach Beroldstein, our hopes in that quarter would be annihilated. Now, keep your eyes open, my dear boy; I must find out who the man is. The affair must be stopped at once. He shall not escape me again.”
Udo nodded and rose. His foxy eyes and sharp features did not look as though they needed any especial incentive to watchfulness beyond nature’s prompting. At the door he turned and asked, with a certain jealous curiosity, “When you catch the fellow, what are you going to do with him?”
As the eyes of father and son met significantly, it would have been difficult to say which shot forth the greater malignity; the only difference was that in Udo’s it was natural, in the Baron’s it seemed rather acquired by the practice of a relentless state-craft. “He must pay the usual penalty of high treason,” he answered.
Udo’s sharp look broadened into a meaning smile. “In such a manner that neither the offence nor the punishment is likely to reach interested ears.”
“Assuredly,” said the Chancellor.
Not a word had come to Princess Ruperta as a consequence of the night’s adventure. No word to tell her whether her lover was dead or alive, no sign of punishment for her escapade, no hint even that it was known. Her father was pompously kind as usual, proud of her imperious beauty, for which he took the credit. So the Chancellor, who, of course, knew, had not thought it proper to tell his royal master; for whatever the Duke’s faults were, he was no dissembler. But this, the consequence to herself, scarcely troubled the Princess in the terrible suspense she endured through the uncertainty of her lover’s fate. When the first paroxysm of despair was over and she had recovered from her swoon, her habitual self-command reasserted itself, and she gave way no more to her feelings. Only Minna, who knew her so well, could guess from a mere shade’s difference in her manner how deep and bitter they were. On one point only was she unrestrained, that was in blaming herself and Minna for inviting Ludovic to what they had had every reason to know might prove a death-trap. For that he had met his death the Princess was sure, although every beat of her heart incited her to doubt it. She read in the silence which was kept towards her that all was over; the merciless hand had shut and clasped for ever the book wherein those sweet words were written. Ah, she could not endure the thought that the voice whose whispered tones had vibrated every chord within her was silent, that the arm that had protected her and clasped her in that dear embrace was cold for evermore. Hers had been a starved life, and now when the wave of love for which she was athirst rippled to her parched lips, it was driven back by this storm of tragedy. Her whole nature now turned in fierce rebellion against the annihilator of her happiness. As the hours went by the torture of an unavailing despair became intolerable. The passion within her was none the less intense that it was voiceless; her rage against Rollmar seemed to have spread itself into every fibre of her body. That she had been rash in leading her lover into a trap in no wise altered the vileness of the fact that the trap was set. Had Ludovic really been taken in it? Minna was persistent and never wavered, at least ostensibly, in her belief that he had escaped. But her mistress brushed aside every theory that argued for his safety.
“You might know the Baron by this,” she said, resenting the flattering insistence of false hopes. “He does not make a mistake ever. His methods are as sure as they are remorseless. I caught a glimpse of him from the window just now. It was not the face of a man who had failed.”
“I might retort, dear Highness,” maintained Minna, “that you might know him well enough to put no trust in that ugly, wrinkled mask. You will learn nothing from our amiable Baron.”