“Now who can have put that portrait here?” cried the Princess, in tones of strong irritation. “Yes, it is the latest likeness of my poor cousin, and I have just had it enlarged at Vindobona, but it was not intended for exhibition in public. Birnsdorf is so officious!” She lifted the scarf as though to cover the picture with it, but Cyril stopped her.
“Permit me to entreat you to leave the portrait as it is, madame. If your Royal Highness needed a foil, you could find no better one than this.”
The callousness of the words would have disgusted most women, but they rejoiced the Princess’s heart. Her expedient had succeeded. She let the scarf fall, and stooped to look at the photograph more closely.
“There is no posing in it, you see,” she said. “My unhappy cousin never knew that she was watched. The original was merely a snap-shot taken by one of the doctors whom the King sent to Syria to visit his mother. There was some idea that it might be necessary”—possible was the word on the Princess’s tongue, but she had no intention of revolting Cyril by an undue display of her hatred towards the woman she had injured—“to place her under restraint, and indeed it was a fortnight before she would consent to receive the doctors. But when they saw her they found that violence formed no part of her disorder, merely extreme depression, as you perceive there.”
“Madame, it is too sad for words,” returned Cyril, in the perfunctory tone of one who finds it incumbent upon him to sympathise in a matter for which he has no sympathy. The Princess noticed his manner with marked satisfaction.
“Alas, Count! I have bored you. You must forgive me. My poor cousin and I have always been such devoted friends. But tell me how you have settled your dispute with England?”
“Without difficulty, madame. The day after my letter reached the Duchess of Old Sarum, Mr Forfar, speaking in London, took occasion to dissociate himself and the Government from the views expressed by Lord Ormsea, and very soon afterwards Lord Ormsea himself, in fear of losing his post, explained that his words were to be understood only in a Pickwickian sense. The slight fall in Consols was so adroitly managed that it seemed the result rather of public alarm than of a Jewish coup de main, and British opinion has definitely ranged itself on our side.”
“Good generalship usually meets with good fortune,” said the Princess, with a smile that converted the truism into an infinitely flattering compliment.
“You are too kind, madame. May I hope for your good wishes in the next little difficulty that lies before me?”
“Indeed you have them, Count. But what is this new trouble?”