“Ah, if that might be!” cried the Professor quickly. “But it is too much to hope.”
“But what good could it do?” asked Eirene, as she had asked of Princess Emilia. “He would hardly withdraw his claim through affection for her.”
“No, but if he marries her, he marries a schismatic, and his claim becomes infinitely weaker than your own,” was the fierce answer. Their eyes met, and Eirene drew a long breath. If Zoe’s fate had depended upon the deliberations of these two plotters, it would have been settled there and then.
CHAPTER IV.
THE STERN PARENT.
“Dear Zeto, why are you so unkind to poor Apolis?”
“I wish I could be, Principessina; it would do him good. But he sees nothing that he doesn’t wish to see.”
“Oh, but he feels it dreadfully. That poem which he addressed to you—how could you have the heart to read it aloud? It brought the tears to my eyes.”
“But it wasn’t addressed to me personally, you know. It was to the ideal love whom he sees in all women that are not actually old and ugly.”
“Ah, now you are unjust, and I can prove it to you. He has confessed to me that he knew before he came who Zeto was, and that he consented to conceal his identity because he hoped to win your favour before you had been prejudiced against him.”
“There is no prejudice whatever. The man doesn’t appeal to me. Can’t you realise that he hasn’t a chance? Why, I must be much more romantic than you really. You think one ought to be able to settle down comfortably with the second-best when one has missed the best, but that’s what I can’t do. The better the thing one has lost, the worse is the punishment of wanting it when one can’t have it, but that’s only fair, when the loss was one’s own fault.” There was a kind of soothing finality in speaking as if the loss in question had been irrevocably incurred a long time ago, not left hanging in doubt until quite lately, but it led Princess Emilia astray, very naturally.