“As if I would ever let you go alone! But that reminds me, Egerton, that it will be much better if I come with you to-morrow when you are smuggling Count Mortimer out of the city. It would look far more natural, for you scarcely ever use the large carriage without me.”
“I can’t have you mixed up in this sort of thing, Vera.”
“But surely no one will know anything about it; and if my coming helps to avert suspicion, it will make it much safer. How far are you going to take Count Mortimer?”
“To Mikhailoslav, he suggested.”
“Then I must go, of course. Don’t you know that is the village where they make that pretty pottery, and I promised to send mamma a crate of it for her garden sale of work? I was going to propose that we should go there to-morrow in the dogcart.”
“You are not suggesting that we should take Mortimer in the dogcart? I think the carriage would be safer.”
“Yes; the people stare at the dogcart so much more, and he would be such a conspicuous figure on the back-seat. We will have the large carriage, Egerton, and I am coming.”
“‘’Tis yours to speak, and mine to hear!’ Can you be ready at a quarter to three? We must not prolong poor Mortimer’s agony unnecessarily.”
“Oh yes, I will be ready. But what do they say now about the crisis?”
“I hear to-night that the Queen will strain every nerve to prevent the disruption of the Cabinet. And well she may, for the nobility are all with Mirkovics, and his secession is likely enough to lead to a war of classes. How Mortimer can bring himself to desert his party at such a moment I cannot imagine. We must hope that after a night’s rest he may take a more cheerful view of things—or even be so much worse as to be unable to be moved.”