“And you are all considerate enough to do as he asked?” cried the Princess, with a laugh in which relief mingled with something of pique. “Why, if I were one of his family, and he had made such a request of me, I should have done nothing but tease him to find out what he really felt.”
Acting, presumably, upon this principle, the Princess prepared to seek information from the best authority, since Philippa could tell her so little. When she received Cyril that afternoon, she was sad and preoccupied, and smiled only with difficulty.
“I fear you have had bad news, madame?” he suggested at last.
“Now how did you guess that?” she asked gratefully. “Yes, I have such a painful account of my cousin, Queen Ernestine, from Syria.” Her fingers played carelessly with a letter bearing a Roumi stamp as she spoke. The letter was more than a year old, but Cyril was not supposed to know that.
“Her Majesty is ill, madame?” he asked, in precisely the right tone of respectful sympathy. A single glance had shown him that the letter was not black-edged, and there was no fear that any news but the worst would make him betray himself.
“No, not exactly ill; but she is subject to such strange delusions. We hoped that the change of scene might benefit her, but I fear there can be no doubt that her mind is permanently affected. Would you believe it?—she will not see a man, or allow one to approach her. You know she is residing with the Königshof deaconesses at their Institution at Brutli, in the Lebanon? Well, I hear that only her ladies and female attendants are allowed to be with her there—the gentlemen must live in the village. It is entirely her own doing, for the Institution would be quite willing to receive them, but she refuses to see even the pastor belonging to the place. Isn’t it extraordinary?”
“Most extraordinary, madame.”
“And she has returned to the very deepest widow’s mourning, only wearing white instead of black. It almost seems,” added the Princess musingly, stealing a glance at Cyril from under the hand which was shading her eyes, “as if she had had some experience which had prejudiced her against your sex.”
“That seems the most probable explanation, madame. The difference with his Majesty, perhaps——”
“Oh, I don’t think that would account for it; do you? No, on second thoughts I rather fancy she must be conscious of having done a great injury to some man, so that remorse drives her to this seclusion.”