But although Prince Soudaroff’s coachman was distinctly ordered, in the hearing of Cyril and Usk, to take the Charlottenbad road, he did not do so, nor did the occupant of the carriage appear to feel any alarm when he found himself being driven exactly in the opposite direction. The road which the coachman appeared to prefer led into the hills, and after a drive of about twenty minutes the carriage stopped at a small door in a park-wall, and Prince Soudaroff alighted. The door opened at his knock, and he walked briskly along the path that led from it, guided by a ray of light from a window at some distance in front. Below this window was a door, which was also opened promptly by an invisible watcher, and admitted the visitor to a passage in which was a back staircase. The man-servant who had been stationed at the door conducted him in perfect silence up the stairs, and through a small ante-room into a luxurious boudoir, in which was sitting a lady in trailing garments of black and a cap with a long black veil falling from it to the ground. She dismissed the servant with a gesture.
“Well, what is your news?” she asked imperiously of Prince Soudaroff.
“Bad, madame. The Mortimer is incorruptible.”
“Then the negotiations are broken off?”
“Unfortunately, madame, we cannot afford to do that. The other side know that they have only to wait, and we must yield.”
“He refuses to consent to the election of my son?”
“He will not express any preference, madame. The matter is one for the Powers, he says. You and I know that his personal assent would satisfy the Emperor, and give us all we want.”
“Because it would discredit him with the Jews when it came out?”
“Either that, madame, or it would so revolt the Catholic powers that they would combine to oblige Roum to refuse the concession, and he would lose his prestige. When the Jews reject him, he cannot sink much lower. Perhaps Hayti would afford the only possible field for his powers.”
The Princess of Dardania smiled gently at the brutal joke. “Then the affair resolves itself once more into a personal contest between Count Mortimer and myself,” she said. “You will let me know anything of moment that occurs to you, and I will turn my thoughts to winning the assent which is either to ruin our friend’s influence or discredit his cause, or both.”