“Tell me what you would wish me to do,” she murmured, despairing sadness visible in every feature.
“Don’t look so miserable, dear. Can’t you trust me to find a way out of this if there is one? I ask you at present only to keep our secret until we have returned to Bellaviste, and I have had time to look round. It is just possible that we may be able to offer Drakovics some equivalent for acquiescing in our plans, or some other chance may turn up. You may be sure that I shall set all my wits to work to find one.”
“Yes,” said the Queen doubtfully, though with the shadow of a smile; “but must we pretend not—not to care for one another?”
“Everything must be just as it was before,” was the decisive reply.
“No, that cannot be; for before last Thursday you and I were always quarrelling. If I quarrelled with you now, after all you have done for my boy, I should be the most ungrateful woman alive, and I am not that. You must allow me to be grateful.”
“Very well, in so far as her Majesty may condescend to be grateful to her poor servant. No. I am not teasing you,” as her eyes filled again with tears. “I have shared my difficulties with you, Ernestine, and asked you to do a hard thing for me, I know, in keeping this distance between us; but I believe you will do it.”
“I will,” she said; “although I had rather you had asked me to come down and stand beside you. But you will not find me fail you.”
“I was sure of it. And as to the necessary ceremony and etiquette, you will remember that we are merely playing parts again, as we did when we left Tatarjé. We have different parts now; but there is just as much at stake.”
“You make me ashamed of myself,” she said. “Yes; I will remember. And now, do you mind fetching the King back? I am sure he has stayed long enough watching the goats.”
As Cyril obeyed, he saw that there was a reason for her request quite different from that which she had given, in three figures which were approaching the house. No doubt Fräulein von Staubach was returning, and Ernestine, catching a distant glimpse of her, had thought it well to begin playing her part at once. Cyril laughed to himself at her diplomacy.