“The faintest whisper of such a thing would ruin us irretrievably, Ernestine. We should set not only Drakovics and Thracia, but all Europe, against us.”
“My beloved, I can’t make you understand that I care nothing for that. I will marry you whether the Constitution is altered or not, and share the consequences with you.”
“Your generosity overpowers me, dearest, but we must face facts. If I suggest the alteration of the Constitution, I am hounded out of Thracia, and we are separated for ever; while if you marry me as things are, you become merely the King’s mother, a foreign princess. You lose the regency by the mere fact of marrying,—if it was solely a question of resignation, you might refuse to do it, and we could tide things over somehow.”
“But I don’t mind giving up the regency—for you.”
“And quitting Thracia, and leaving Drakovics to do what he likes with your child and his kingdom?”
“Oh no, no,” she said eagerly. “I remember; I have been thinking about that. We will be married privately by Batzen, and then escape in disguise—you and I, and Michael, and perhaps Sophie. I should not be frightened in the least with you. Then we will go to England—no, not to England; they are relations, and would not protect me against my father and Sigismund—but to America, and throw ourselves on the protection of the President of the United States. They always protect people in America, and with the King in our hands we could make terms with M. Drakovics.”
Cyril gazed at her animated face and sparkling eyes in wonder, marvelling at the audacity and naïveté of the scheme. For a moment his heart warmed towards her; then he saw himself the butt of the world’s caricaturists, from San Francisco to Yokohama, and it hardened again. “My dear child,” he said, “we are not living in the Middle Ages. Drakovics would like nothing better than for us to carry out your plan. He would proclaim the deposition of the King, and either choose another or establish a republic.”
“Then you will not take any steps at all?”
“No step of that kind, certainly.”
“That means, then, that you wish our engagement to be at an end? I must thank you for being so plain. Oh, what have I done? what have you done? Why let me betray that I cared for you when you do not love me? But I thought you did! I thought you did!”