CHAPTER III.
THE RIVAL HEIR.
At the Palace, Zoe was enjoying a new experience, and enjoying not least the humorous side of it, for she was not one of the people who can never see anything funny in what concerns themselves. Entertainments given in her honour, and lavish compliments, were no novelty to her, but she had never hitherto met with the whole-hearted devotion shown by her youthful hostess. A very young girl when the Prince of Dardania carried her captive by the force of a masterful personality and a touch of Eastern fascination, Princess Emilia had felt it to be extremely romantic that after one sight of her he should have broken off the engagement arranged for him by his mother, and refused to marry any one but the little sister of the Magnagrecian monarch. Her brother, the king, yielded to the demand of the two lovers, and Princess Emilia left the greatest centre of culture in Southern Europe to reign over a nation of half-barbarous mountaineers, and incidentally to introduce a new issue and a new complication into the Balkan question. Dardania was now no longer to be regarded as the faithful henchman of Scythia, she looked westwards instead of east; and her Prince had announced publicly that he desired no accession of territory on the Emathian side, while not denying that the rocky coast region of Illyria had attractions which would make him and his Magnagrecian brother-in-law very willing to police and civilise it in unison. Princess Emilia cared nothing for politics, save in their romantic aspect. She thought her husband’s self-denying ordinance with respect to Emathia was most noble, and the Theophanis claim to the throne of the Eastern Empire filled her with enthusiasm, though this was less by reason of its intrinsic merits than because Maurice was Zoe’s brother. Brought up in a highly literary society, the Princess suffered from a kind of mental starvation in her new sphere, for which she tried to compensate herself in every way open to her. She was an omnivorous reader and a born critic, and her favourite maid-of-honour, Donna Olimpia Pazzi, shared her mistress’s tastes, though in a minor degree, as was becoming. Together they plied Zoe with questions and comments on every book ever written, made her read portions of her own novels aloud to them, recited the great poems of their native land with an accent that enhanced the beauty of the words, and called in the Court bard, who held a hereditary place in the household of the Alexeiévitch family, that they might translate to her his wild ballads of border war and revenge. On this particular morning they enjoyed themselves so thoroughly that when the Prince returned from the games he scoffed openly at his wife’s plea of indisposition, and wished he had thought of escaping some very dull gymnastic contests in the same way. When he left them, Princess Emilia linked her arm in Zoe’s, and walked down with her through the Palace garden to the gate by which the house allotted to the Theophanis party was reached.
“You must promise me again that nothing shall prevent you from coming to the reception to-night,” she said. “It is our last chance of welcoming our own friends in peace before my mother-in-law arrives.”
“The Dowager Princess comes to-morrow, doesn’t she?” asked Zoe. Princess Emilia assented with a little grimace.
“Yes, and she says it is because she is yearning to see us again, though she hates me, and can’t forgive Alexis for marrying me. She is really coming to spy, I know. She wishes to see whether your brother is likely to succeed, and endanger her dear Kazimir’s future. You know she hopes to make him Prince of Emathia?”
“I know, and I have often wondered—though perhaps I ought not to say it—why the Prince of Dardania doesn’t support his brother rather than a stranger.”
“Oh, Kazimir is a thorough Scythian,—he is in the Imperial Guard, you know,—and Alexis and he have never agreed. And perhaps it was a little my doing, too. The Princess Dowager had made herself so very disagreeable that I wasn’t sorry when I found out a way to punish her. You think me very wicked? Wait till you see my mother-in-law!”
“I have heard plenty about her,” said Zoe, with an involuntary smile, “and I certainly don’t expect to like her. But she has had rather a sad life lately, hasn’t she? All her plans seem to have gone wrong for the last few years.”
“Then she shouldn’t make such unpleasant plans. You can’t expect me to be glad that her plan for marrying Alexis to that Scythian girl failed?” She drew up her small figure with mock dignity, and Zoe acknowledged that this would be too much to expect. “My mother-in-law has no feeling for romance,” Princess Emilia went on, “though her own marriage was so romantic. All the matches she promotes are cold, calculating, political things. Now I—I palpitate with romance to the tips of my fingers!” she flung them out airily. “That is the sole want I find in you, my sweetest Zeto. You have plenty of romance somewhere about you, but it is all shut up inside you and locked tight, when it ought to overflow into your life. Dearest, indulge me; allow me the chance of arranging a little romance for you!”
“No, thanks,” said Zoe, with a little shiver. “Romances in real life are uncomfortable things, and I’m not sure that people are not happiest without them.”