“Your Majesty asks too much. My friend the King would have been the last person to wish that my promise to him should bind me to remain exposed to such insults without having the right to resent them. To borrow your own words to the Premier, madame, your conduct has been unpardonable.”
“Not unpardonable, when you have been assured that the suggestion was made only in jest, and as a means of proving your fidelity in the eyes of others. Your Queen entreats you to retain your post, Count. Is not that enough? Must I fetch my son to join his entreaties with mine?”
“Be quiet, you little fool!” hissed the Princess into her daughter’s ear. Cyril caught the whisper, and it changed the current of his thoughts in a moment. He saw the whole plot now; and where the Queen’s pleading had failed to move him, a determination that the Princess should not be able to boast of having effected his removal from the Thracian scene succeeded. He turned again to Ernestine.
“I accept your explanation, madame,” he said; “but I can only beg you to remember that others might not be so complaisant.”
“And we will go to Praka,” she cried, as he prepared to depart.
“I will convey your Majesty’s message to the Premier,” he replied, still in the same frigid tone, with his hand on the door. It was not his intention to let the Queen down too easily this time. She had committed a faux pas, which might have been a fatal one, and she must be made aware of the fact. Suppose she had made her offer of a bribe to a man who had accepted it, or who, while refusing it, had done so with the intention of publishing the matter abroad? Cyril took a good deal of credit to himself for the tone he had maintained, and resolved to teach his young sovereign a lesson. It was quite evident that she had failed to realise the gravity of the insult she offered; but she could not always expect her inexperience to procure her immunity from the consequences of her foolish acts. The stars in their courses cannot be relied upon to fight invariably for the same person, even though she is young and beautiful and a Queen. Cyril had been too forbearing hitherto, and this was his reward. Queen Ernestine must now be made to understand that practical jokes and wayward tempers were all very well in an irresponsible schoolgirl, but might prove dangerous to the Regent of Thracia.
During the next few days Cyril never saw the Queen alone, and only rarely in company with M. Drakovics. Whenever he entered her presence, he knew that she was searching his face to see whether he had forgiven her, and the fact gave him a keen sense of pleasure, which he was careful to conceal, returning to the coldly deferential manner which he had preserved towards her in her husband’s lifetime, and which he succeeded in resuming with some difficulty, after the comparatively friendly intercourse of the past few weeks. It was the Queen herself who broke the ice at last, for it was not in her nature to remain passive in face of what she chose to consider injustice. She found her opportunity on the occasion of an official reception at the Palace, which the Ministers and their wives were expected to attend, on the anniversary of the declaration of Thracian independence. Cyril was standing a little apart from the other officials when she passed round the circle, addressing a few words to each person, and she spoke to him in English, which scarcely any one else understood.
“I see that you have not yet forgiven me, Count?”
“There are some things, madame, which may be forgiven, but never forgotten.”
“But surely that is a very undignified attitude of mind? If my little son adopted it, I should tell him he was sulky.”