“What do you want me to do?”
“Madame, your promptness is admirable. Nothing, save to emphasise in conversation the favour with which Princess Theophanis is regarded at our court, the anxiety felt in the highest quarters to see her husband successful—the efforts, indeed, that are being made to ensure his election. You will know how best to disseminate the impression in the most likely soil.”
“You may trust me!” said the Princess.
The first tangible result of this conversation was the presentation to Eirene, with great ceremony, of the Empress’s letter. It was accompanied by a most sacred icon, which had been specially blessed by Father Serafim, the favourite miracle-worker of the day in Scythia, and he had sent with it an assurance of his prayers for Maurice’s success. The sensation caused by this embassy had hardly subsided, when all the cosmopolitan circles of Therma were buzzing with the news of a most extraordinary indiscretion on the part of Prince Soudaroff. He had actually said—true, it was after dinner and in the presence of only a few intimate diplomatic friends,—but he had said that Scythia looked to Emathia under her new ruler to compensate her for the losses and disappointments she had sustained in the Far East. Instantly all the people who had been thunderstruck when the Scythian Ambassador at Czarigrad proposed Maurice’s election nodded wisely at one another. This was the explanation, then! No one had ever suspected Scythia of acting on an impulse of pure philanthropy, and it was abundantly clear that she had received ample guarantees from Prince Theophanis before she put her interest in him to the test of publicity. When Maurice’s supporters denied indignantly that he had given her any pledges, they merely nodded more wisely still, and implied that the denial raised their opinion of his political sagacity.
The most keenly amused of his critics was Prince Romanos, who had been one of the first arrivals at the resuscitated city, carrying one arm in a sling, but more gay and debonnaire than ever, so bubbling over with pleasure at meeting his friends again that it would have been sheer cruelty to refer to the circumstances in which he had parted from them. A violent flirtation with Donna Olimpia occupied most of his time at first, but the Princess Dowager took a very strong view of this amusement when it came to her knowledge, and practically forbade him her house, so that his rivals were free to enjoy his society all day long.
“You are unfortunate in your backer,” he said one day, when Maurice and Wylie had been discussing with considerable irritation the latest Scythian manœuvre. “Now I cannot flatter myself that Pannonia proposed me for any more exalted reason than to prevent your being elected, but at least she lets me alone.”
“Probably much better for your prospects,” growled Wylie.
“But certainly. Scythia’s fussy eagerness for your success can only do you harm, while Pannonia’s wholesome neglect will bring me in triumphantly.”
“You seem very sure you are going to succeed,” said Maurice.
“I am; absolutely certain. I feel it here,” he struck his chest. “I will tell you why,” he lowered his voice mysteriously; “everything has succeeded with me lately. I am in the—what do you call it?—line of success.”