“Oh, please don’t remind me of the dreadful things I said then! It makes me ashamed to think that I could ever have been so blind. Wasn’t it only a just retribution that such a short time after I had been abusing Count Mortimer, Michael and I should owe our very lives to his devotion and presence of mind?”
“It provided you with a reason for modifying your opinion of him, no doubt. But surely, Ernestine, your gratitude might have stopped short of allowing him to make himself the most powerful man in Thracia. You may be sure that it will not be long before he will make use of his elevation to try and oust you from the regency.” This last remark, be it observed, was what is known in vulgar parlance as a feeler.
“Oust me from the regency!” cried Ernestine hotly; then her tone changed. “My dear Ottilie, how little you know him!” she said, with a superior smile. “I assure you that you are quite mistaken.”
“But he has ousted Drakovics, and is in possession of his place;”—the Princess was observing her cousin curiously, but with something of satisfaction in her look.
“No, there you are wrong again, Ottilie. He would be in his old post now, if it were not for me. When M. Drakovics tried to force upon me an appointment which was most distasteful to me for many reasons, I sent for Count Mortimer and ordered him to oppose him. I can’t tell you the whole story now, but although it has ended in Count Mortimer’s becoming Premier, it was due to me that he severed himself from M. Drakovics at all.”
“How delightful to have a knight-errant at command, ready to fight one’s battles in this way! Really, Nestchen, I envy you. I wish we had a Count Mortimer (with a few variations) in Dardania. But you don’t imagine that he would have accepted your commission if it had not fallen in with his own views, and promised to lead to the goal at which he was secretly aiming?”
“I can’t judge about that, since I am not Count Mortimer’s confessor.” The Queen spoke sharply, and as though the thought were an unwelcome one. “At any rate, if the idea of the Premiership had entered his mind, I am sure that he well deserved the prize, and I feel quite content that he should hold it.”
“There is nothing like a thorough conversion when one is about it. And you are now in the habit of taking Count Mortimer’s advice on every subject that may happen to be under discussion, I suppose?”
“I ask it, certainly—and in nearly every case I take it.”
“That is just what I thought. Well, Ernestine, doesn’t it strike you that it would have been kinder to let me know this before I visited you?”