Some great emotion was stirring Otto through and through. At last he spoke; and the man seemed changed—a different being. From under the gentle manner, the docile, ready air, came struggling up the fierce spirit of opposition.
“You despise the crown you married me for? Is that so? Well, I will teach you to respect it.”
A smile dawned on Fleta’s clouded face and then was gone again in a moment. This was all the answer she vouchsafed to the kingly threat. Otto turned and looked at her steadily.
“A magnificent creature,” he said, “beautiful, and with a brain of steel, and perhaps for all I know, a heart like it. You won a great deal from me, Fleta, a little while since. Did I not submit to the masquerading of your mysterious Order? Did I not trust my life to those treacherous monks of yours, submit to be blindfolded and led into their haunt by secret ways. For what end? Ivan told me of aspirations, of ideas, of thoughts, which only sickened my soul and filled me with shame and despair. For I am a believer in order, in moral rule, in the government of the world in accordance with the principles of religion. I told you I was willing to become a member of the order; yes, because my nature is in sympathy with its avowed tenets. But its secret doctrines as I have heard them from you, as I have heard them from the man you call your master, are to me detestable. And it is for the carrying out of this unholy theory or doctrine that you propose to surrender your life? No, Fleta; you are now my queen.”
“Yes,” said Fleta. “I am now your queen. I know that I have chosen the lot willingly. You need not again tell me that I have the crown I purposed to obtain.”
At this moment they arrived at the palace. There was yet a weary mass of ceremony and speaking of polite nothings to be passed through before there was any chance of their being alone again. Otto relapsed into the pleasant and kindly manner which was habitual with him.[him.] Fleta fell into one of her abstracted moods, and the court adopted its usual policy under such circumstances—let her be undisturbed. Few of the men cared to risk the satirical answers that came readiest to her lips when she was roused out of such a mood as this.
And yet at last someone did venture to rouse her; and a smile, delicious as a burst of sunshine, came swiftly and suddenly on her mouth.
It was Hilary Estanol. Pale, worn, the mere ghost of himself, his dark eyes looking strangely large in the white face they were set in.[in.] They were fixed on her as though there were nothing else in the world to look at.
Fleta held out her hand to him; his companion—a military officer who had brought him under protest, and in some doubt, for Hilary had no friends at Court—drew back in amazement. He understood now Hilary’s importunity.
Hilary bent over Fleta’s hand and held his lips near it for an instant, but did not touch it. A sort of groan came to her ear from his lips.