For answer Father Lamormain rose, opened the door by which she had entered, a thick door, over which fell a heavy curtain of leather, and pointed to a farther door, ten feet along the passage, beyond which was the room where the secretary worked.
She saw that they were indeed cut off from human earshot, for the room, in which they were, projected, at a considerable height, beyond the walls of the main building, and had nothing to right or left.
Her eyes seemed to sweep casually over the table and incidentally over the unsealed parchment, but with indifference. "Was that to be the subject of the interview?" she asked herself.
Apparently not.
"It behoves princes," said the priest, "to strengthen their families as well by alliances as by leagues and treaties, and especially by the marriages of their sons and daughters. And whereas the son of a prince, if he be a good son, will always be a stay and support to his father's kingdom, whomsoever he marry, a daughter may, by bringing him a stout son-in-law, who is also a prince, in a measure add that princedom and its power to her father's. Contrariwise she may, if she be ill-advised or rash in her own choice, out of waywardness bring trouble to the prince her father, and no measure of help to her husband, as was the case of the Princess Elizabeth of England when she married the Elector Palatine, the Pfalsgrave, whose dominion being but petty led him into dangerous enterprises to gain others, and being too far distant from his father-in-law, the King of England, was not afforded sufficient aid in the time of his undertakings to ensure success."
"A very wise homily, Father, and a most pertinent example!" the Archduchess observed. "And now the application?"
"Your Highness is of a ripe age for marriage!" said the priest gravely.
"And has been," she rejoined, "these several years, according to the custom of princes. My cousin of Spain was but sixteen when the King of England was agog for her to wed his son, who is now King Charles, and it was through no unwillingness of hers that the match fell through. But I have had the more years of freedom. I am in no mind to be tied to any beardless boy, and sit a-tapestry-sewing for the rest of my life."
The priest pursued his way without comment.
"The dangers that environ the empire make it necessary beyond the ordinary to knit our friends to it by every means in our power."