“He will be obliged to detach himself from them some day. This Paul and Virginia kind of life can’t go on for ever. Can’t you try to get hold of him again, Ernestine? He was absolutely devoted to you at one time—that time when you were so jealous of his being fond of me.”
“Ah, but I am growing old and grey-haired and tired,” she said wearily, “and I feel differently, too. He does love me still, but I dare not risk the loss of his love by setting myself against his friends. I have so little that I am afraid of losing everything.”
“Old? nonsense!” cried Cyril. “My dear child, I am nearly ten years older than you are, and I feel as young as ever. You are not thirty-five yet.”
“Thirty-two,” she said seriously, not perceiving that he had purposely over-estimated her age. “But I feel old. Ottilie has her husband and children—she keeps young. Surely she need not have stolen my one child from me? Oh, Cyril,” she threw out her hands towards him with a passionate gesture, “you are all I have left. Don’t forsake me.”
“Forsake you? Who ever thought of such a thing?” asked Cyril, putting his arm round her tenderly. It was one of the moments at which something (it could not have been conscience, for he prided himself on having none) asked him inconvenient questions as to his share in the hardship of this twelve years’ waiting as compared with Ernestine’s. “We have not very long to wait now, dear. In less than three years Michael will be of age.”
“Yes, but—I have become so much accustomed to this waiting that I can’t believe in happiness, Cyril. I am afraid—I feel still that even yet, if I stood in the way of your political success, you would brush me out of your path—me!”
“I think you don’t believe in me, that is very evident. Never mind; in three years’ time we will see which was right.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
IN SIGHT OF THE GOAL.
“Half an hour to wait here! Wake up, Mansfield, and don’t be so atrociously slack. We must have a little walk and stretch our legs.”
The speaker was a young Englishman, scarcely more than a boy, who had just returned from questioning the guard as the Balkan express to Vienna slowed down preparatory to entering the station at Bellaviste. His companion, the appeal to whom was emphasised by throwing a folded newspaper at his head, was a man some five years older, with “Cambridge” written all over him.