“Your Majesty will permit me to remain with you?” asked the Vienna doctor, noticing the sudden strength in the King’s voice, and anticipating a reaction.
“In the anteroom, doctor, if you please. I wish to be alone with Count Mortimer. What! must I command twice?”
“You certainly need not command twice,” said the Queen, rising from her seat with tears of mortification in her eyes, and following the discomfited doctors. “I regret to have trespassed upon the privacy of your Majesty and Count Mortimer.”
“Stay, madame!” cried the King. “Ernestine, remain where you are, I entreat you. You must know with what anxiety I have watched for Count Mortimer’s arrival; surely you cannot object to my making known to him in your presence my dying wishes?”
“Forgive me,” said the Queen, returning to her place, her voice softening. “I thought you wished me to leave you. It was a mistake.”
“It has all been a series of mistakes, I fear,” said the King, laying his hand on that of his wife. “I have not made you happy, Nestchen.”
“I wish I had been a better wife to you,” the Queen whispered painfully, and Cyril bent forward to examine with extreme care some minute detail of the painting he had been contemplating since his entrance into the room.
“It was not your fault,” the King went on. “You should be a child still—and now I must leave you to guard our son’s throne for him. You are very young—very inexperienced—to undertake such a heavy charge.”
“Don’t let that trouble you,” she said, trying to comfort him. “Is he not my son? His kingdom must be my constant care.”
“But how will you take care of it, poor child? What do you know of pitting Pannonia against Hercynia, and playing them both off against Scythia and Neustria? Can you hide your personal feelings under a veil of official friendliness? Why, Nestchen, you will be at enmity with half Europe in a week!”