“My scheme is simply to pack Michael off to Vienna as soon as all the fuss next week is over. He has never seen any girls but his cousins, and you will find very soon that there is safety in numbers. I would take him to Paris myself, if it was safe to leave the kingdom for so long. That would cure him very quickly of his calf-love, but Vienna is the next best place.”
“But you don’t seem to understand, Cyril, and yet I told you only two days ago that it was a matter of conscience with me not to thwart Michael in an affair of this kind. I suppose I can’t make you see it quite as I do, but it always seems to me”—her voice faltered—“as if in this way I could make a sort of atonement for the way in which I treated his father. I daresay it sounds very foolish and illogical to you,” as Cyril’s lip curled, “but if I could feel that Michael’s married life, at any rate, was likely to be a happy one, it would not seem as if our unhappy marriage was to go on causing unhappiness to generation after generation.”
“Let me beg of you to look at things from a common-sense point of view, Ernestine. Your husband would have been the last to wish the good of Thracia to be sacrificed for a foolish fancy about making atonement to him.”
“I knew you would not see what I meant. But still, Cyril, even if change and distraction helped Michael to get over his trouble, as you suggest, I should never forgive myself for allowing poor little Lida to be cast aside. No; I have often heard you say that when a misfortune is irremediable, the only sensible thing to do is to accept the situation and start afresh from it.”
“But when the situation is absolutely impossible, what then?”
“But it can’t be, if you accept it. I thought you might perhaps arrange a compact with Ottilie, that the wedding should not take place for five years, until Michael is twenty-one, and that during that time she should not make any attempt to interfere in Thracian affairs, or to prejudice Michael against you. What do you think?”
“Truly excellent, if the wit of man can devise any possible means of making the Princess of Dardania keep a promise which it suits her to break. And what about breaking faith with the Emperors, and reversing the policy which I have laboured for twelve years to establish? Have women no idea of political morality, of duty to the country? Can you in cold blood imagine that I am likely to hand over Thracia, bound, to Scythia, after all I have done to strengthen her independence and give her a voice among the Powers?”
“But she says you have no choice,” faltered Ernestine.
“Who says?—the Princess of Dardania? That was the secret of your anxiety for me in your suggested compromise, was it? What is the dilemma into which she hopes to force me?”
“She said that you must either reverse your policy and allow Michael to marry Lida, or oppose him for a week and then be dismissed—that there was no alternative. She says Michael will do what she tells him.”