“Your kindness overwhelms me, madame. Have I your Highness’s permission to retire? I know my presence must be distasteful.”
“No; there is something else you can do, Count. I have another son, and I have set my heart on his becoming governor of Palestine. That is in your power to bring about.”
“Alas, madame! Why ask me the one impossible thing? The decision does not rest with me, nor even with my friends.”
The Princess smiled more gently still. “I must take the will for the deed, I suppose?” she said. “That is poor comfort for an anxious mother, Count. But don’t think I blame you. You will come here occasionally when your niece is with us, and assure yourself that we are taking proper care of her? We need not sadden the young with the knowledge of our troubles. Come as often as you like, and do not feel compelled to ask for me. I cannot forget that I am growing old.”
“Then, madame, you succeed where all the rest of the world has failed,” responded Cyril, kissing the beautiful hand she held out to him. His manner was remorseful, and his eyes lingered on her face as he left the room. As soon as he was gone, the Princess crossed the floor to a large mirror.
“He was more nearly human than I have ever known him,” she mused. “What can it be?” She smiled consciously as her eyes fell upon the reflection in the glass. “Would it be possible? What a triumph! to have him at my feet! But he is dangerous; I dare not trust him. There is Ernestine, too; I must sound him on that subject. That will give me some clue to his present feelings. He is open to conviction on the subject of Kazimir, I think; but even that would be nothing in comparison with the joy of snatching him from Ernestine. But I must not think of that. I must keep cool. If he once gets the upper hand, all is lost. I am glad I thought of giving him a general invitation. Ah, Birnsdorf,” as the lady-in-waiting appeared at the door, “I want you to take one of the carriages, and go to Princess Soudaroff’s lodgings. You will carry a note from me, and bring back Lady Philippa Mortimer. Impress upon the old fanatic that Lida is making herself ill for want of the girl, and say anything else that occurs to you as likely to weigh with her.”
Countess Birnsdorf curtseyed and retired, and executed her mission with so much success that Philippa returned with her to the villa within an hour. Cyril had prepared Princess Soudaroff’s mind for the request, and the Countess worked skilfully upon her feelings; hence the easy victory.
The week of Philippa’s stay at the villa—a stay which she discovered to be intended as a reward for what Countess Birnsdorf called the “delicate correctness” of her conduct—was not a period of unmixed bliss. The house and grounds were beautiful, and the etiquette exacted by the Princess not excessive, but the atmosphere was new and disagreeable to Philippa. The air seemed full of plots, every one appeared to be playing a part, and the unreality oppressed her, while her usual home remedy for bad spirits, a brisk ride or a long ramble over the hills, was unattainable. She complained afterwards that she never had a chance of blowing the cobwebs away, restricted as she was to stately promenades with Countess Birnsdorf, or funereal drives in a closed carriage with the Princess. Nor were her troubles wholly physical. Her father’s wisdom in declining a crown, and preferring England to the Continent as a residence, commended itself to her more and more when she told herself that even she, placed in Princess Lida’s circumstances, might have learned to share her views of right and wrong. Princess Lida, she found, had fallen deeply in love, not with King Michael, but with a gentleman occupying an official position of some sort, to whose identity she gave no clue, intending, possibly, that Philippa should elicit it by means of cross-examination. But Philippa was disappointing. She was as much shocked as the Princess could desire, but not so much at the existence of the attachment as at the fact that it was not intended to lead to anything more. She listened with but slight interest to Princess Lida’s vivacious enumeration of the various artifices by which she and her lover contrived to carry on their flirtation under the very noses of the Princess of Dardania and Countess Birnsdorf, and she interrupted the history of a certain Court ball, at which the pair had succeeded in exchanging notes, by the question—
“But what do you mean to do about him?”
“Do? What is there to be done? I suppose we shall simply go on.”