“Not at all, pardon me. He has fallen; but I do not wish him to drag us down with him.”
“Oh, do what you like,” said Ernestine pettishly. “Make your own arrangements. It seems to me that whatever happens, I have always the worst of it. I should have thought——” tears choked her voice.
“If your Majesty will excuse me,”—Cyril’s tone was severely businesslike, and he ignored the tears altogether,—“I will proceed to take the steps I have mentioned, and also to communicate them to my colleagues. You will not require my presence again to-day, perhaps?”
“Yes, I shall,” was the angry reply. “You are to come back as soon as you have sent your messages. I could not be so cruel as to detain you longer now.”
Cyril made no answer, and departed with an absolutely unmoved face. When he returned, after despatching his business, he observed that Ernestine had evidently improved the interval by what an Englishwoman would have called “having a good cry.” She was calm again now, but in a frame of mind which could only be described as injured, and Cyril braced himself for a tussle.
“You wished to see me, madame?” he remarked.
“Sit down,” she said imperiously. “I don’t want you to be ill again, in spite of your unkindness to me.” She paused for a reply; but as Cyril only bowed in acknowledgment of the favour, she found it impossible to remain silent. “I am quite convinced,” she went on, “that you care far more for politics than you do for me. If I died to-day, I believe your first thought would be how to get yourself made regent to-morrow.”
Still no answer, and she became desperate.
“If it is not true, at least you might say so. You don’t—you can’t mean me to understand that you have only made—made use of me as a step to your own advancement—that you have never cared for me at all?”
“That is enough, Ernestine,” said Cyril bitterly, rising from his seat. “It is indeed generous and noble in you to taunt me with the difference in our positions. I thought that you believed me disinterested, if no more; but I see that I was mistaken. I will make no attempt to defend myself—how can I? It is quite true that at your entreaty I broke with Drakovics, and resigned office. This has led, as it happens, to the prospect of higher office, and therefore it is clear that I acted with that in view. I will not deny it; I will only say that I did not expect to find my action cast in my teeth by the woman for whose sake it was taken.”