The Baron made a restraining gesture. “I do not know him even by sight; have no idea who he is; but that he is here I am certain. Watch the Princess. I will have my men ready. To-night must see the end of this folly.”
It was not long before the Princess, her every sense of observation quickened by excitement, became aware that the sharp eyes of Udo Rollmar were following her every movement. The same whisper that told Minna of Ludovic’s safety warned her of the spy.
“You must contrive to put him on his guard,” she said, “while I draw Captain Udo away. But, above all, beware of the Baron. I cannot see him, but feel sure he is watching from his spider’s corner.”
When they had separated, and Minna, on the arm of the vainest and, consequently, the most stupid Court popinjay she could find, had strolled off in search of Ludovic, the Princess signed graciously to Udo and brought that fierce little fox to her side.
“You are quite determined to avoid us to-night, Captain von Rollmar,” she said, forcing a spirit of banter with the man she now loathed.
Udo’s glance, as it met hers, changed from one of artful resentment to a certain fiery admiration. With the object he had in view, it was, he felt, waste of time to talk to her; he would have preferred to watch and mark down her lover, thereby at one stroke appeasing his own jealousy and paying her for the trick she had played him. But in the veins of the fox-like little Captain, while he had much of his father’s malicious keenness, ran warmer blood, and he was thus liable to a weakness against which assuredly the Chancellor was proof. The flush of excitement, of joy at the sight of her lover, had given a radiance to Princess Ruperta’s beauty and an animation, an exaltation which it usually lacked. To-night it was perfect, striking, irresistible. It flashed down upon the cunning little face before her, the sharp, crafty eyes with their red lashes, the carefully turned-up moustache, and general dandified treatment of a natural repulsiveness; and in that flash it took and held captive the treacherous mind opposed to her. For that mind told him he had never seen such radiant, imperious beauty. To turn his back upon it when there was an opportunity of luxuriating in it would be the act of a Stoic or a madman, and he was neither. He was quite shrewd enough to know there was but a poor chance for him in the long run, that even now he was but favoured for a purpose; but then he was vain, and the future flattered him with possibilities, vague, desperate, yet not unachievable. At least, his father’s schemes and his own vindictiveness could wait for half an hour.
“If that was your idea, Highness,” he replied, “you might have attributed my seeming avoidance to the consciousness that my society might not be welcome.”
She laughed. Reading in his eyes the effect she was working, she took care to keep him well under the spell. “Since when has Captain Udo von Rollmar grown diffident?”
“Since his Princess showed him clearly, if unintentionally, that his company was only welcome as a means to an end.”
Still smarting under the trick, he could not resist the taunt. But she lightly ignored it.