“And you are Nadia!” she said, taking her hand in both hers. “Pardon me, dear madame, but I knew your husband long ago, and I have heard him speak of you. The tone of his voice as he mentioned your name so impressed itself upon my mind that I have thought of you as Nadia ever since.”
“And you are the Princess Ottilie,” said Nadia slowly, looking into the dark eyes which met hers with a friendly light in them. “Forgive me, I should say the Princess of Dardania.”
“Thanks to Lord Caerleon,” was the instant answer. “Ah, madame, you know the story—how your husband sacrificed his own feelings that he might assist a helpless girl, driven almost desperate by the cruelty of her circumstances. That girl stands before you now. Will you not allow one who owes her happy married life to the magnanimity of Lord Caerleon to help you in your trouble? Even the mouse helped the lion, you know.”
“Madame, you are too good,” stammered Nadia.
“Good? No, I am not that, madame, but I hope I am not ungrateful. ‘Our Princess never forgets a friend, or forgives a foe’—that is what they say of me in Dardania, and they say it also in certain of the chancelleries of Europe,” she laughed maliciously. “Tell me now what it is that is troubling you? Your husband has been arrested through some stupid mistake of the police?”
“I do not know, madame. He was to join me this afternoon; but his servant arrived without him, bringing word that his master had been arrested suddenly at Velisi. There was no dispute with the police, so far as I know.”
“At Velisi?” The Princess looked thoughtful. “Lord Caerleon had not been warned not to enter the country, or in any other way made himself obnoxious to the Government, had he?”
“Oh no. He could not have crossed the frontier more than an hour.”
“And that would barely have allowed time for a message to be sent to Bellaviste and answered. No; the order for the arrest must have come from here. And the only person with authority sufficient to venture on such a step is your husband’s brother, Count Mortimer.”
“Impossible, madame! My husband and his brother are on the best of terms.”