“Go on. I will relieve your wounded feelings in any way I can.”
“You were intending to—to try and get the Queen to be reconciled?”
“Before there was any idea of its being to my advantage? Yes.”
“And you mean to do it still? You think she will forgive you?”
“The woman I used to know would forgive me. But suppose she is changed? I have no right to expect anything else, and I have only myself to thank. There is just one thing——”
“Yes?” said Mansfield eagerly.
“Some time ago I was shown a photograph of her, taken since she left Europe. The woman who showed it to me would have been the last person in the world to wish to give me any hope, but she did not see the significance of what I noticed. On the Queen’s arm there was a bracelet——”
“Which you had given her?”
“Not quite. Prince Mirkovics’s daughter, one of her Hofdamen, gave it to her once at Christmas. It had one very large diamond in it, and to the uninitiated that was all. But the diamond was so cut that by looking at it at a certain angle you could see a portrait in the setting behind it. The Queen was delighted.”
“And it was your portrait? and she was wearing it still?”