“Why, certainly. The King has insulted her unpardonably, so she says, and I guess there isn’t anything to be done but eliminate him for the future.”
“Then you will be obliged to go to her at Paranati?”
“That’s so, and it makes me real mad. I had concluded to wander around in these parts some, and try and solve the mystery of this last disappearance of the Count’s, and now I don’t see but you’ll have to do what you can without me. What riles me is the way things seem to work for the other side all the time. It’s that which is telling on Lady Usk too, I guess.”
Usk nodded gravely, for it seemed as if Helene could not forgive herself for her failure to rescue Cyril. In vain her husband and Mr Hicks pointed out that she could not in any case have saved him by herself, and that the circumstances made it impossible for her to get together a band of helpers. She was convinced that there was something she might have done if she had had more presence of mind, or even—to go back to the beginning of her misfortunes—that she would have done far better not to approach the Pelenko mansion at all, rather than give the alarm by her sudden appearance there, and thus enable Dr Gregorescu to remove his patient. That there was some truth in this could not be denied, and Helene brooded over it until she was at times persuaded that Usk must hate her for her disastrous interference, and she made herself miserable over an alienation which was quite imaginary. To Usk such a state of mind was utterly incomprehensible. Helene was tired after her adventures and inclined to be morbid, he thought, and he dragged her out into the fresh air, and scolded her good-humouredly, never dreaming that she took his scoldings seriously to heart, and believed that he invited her out with him as a matter of duty.
“It’s a real misfortune that your mother is set fast at Geneva, and Queen Ernestine at Vindobona,” Mr Hicks went on. “You and I, Lord Usk, we don’t know just the way to get hold of a little sensitive girl like that, and put things so’s she must take a cheerful view of them. We can’t seem to fix it that she should have a good cry, and feel better, which is what she wants.”
Usk was silent. His private opinion was that Helene cried a great deal without feeling any better, but he was not going to say this to Mr Hicks, although he did not resent his curious assumption of a share in the charge of her, knowing that any woman in trouble imposed a responsibility upon the American to see that she was comforted or righted.
“Did you try suggesting to her that her mother should come here?” Mr Hicks asked.
“Yes; but it was no good. She said at once that her mother couldn’t leave her father, and that the Grand-Duke wouldn’t like this place at all.”
“No; I guess he’d raise Cain a few dozen times a day, which wouldn’t be soothing to his daughter’s nerves. And did you propose that she should take a fortnight’s vacation, and go right home to them?”
“Yes; and it made her perfectly miserable. She thought I wanted to send her away from me, and she was so unhappy I had to promise never to suggest such a thing again.”