Again he threw himself into his chair, his brow dark and thoughtful. The appointment they had made when she had visited him she had been unable to keep, as she had had to accompany the Queen to Naples; and she had only just returned, she explained.
How strange was it all. If by good chance he were successful in his inquiries he might, after all, save Italy and her Sovereign.
But could he? Was the dastardly conspiracy too clever and well sustained? Ay, that was the question.
Those very men—those Ministers who depended upon the King’s good graces, and would lick His Majesty’s boots, were the same men who were now betraying him and the country into the hands of their hereditary enemy. And for gold—always for gold—that most necessary commodity upon which the devil has for ever set his curse.
That afternoon he spent at the Embassy attending to dispatches brought from Downing Street by the King’s messenger who had arrived in Rome that morning, and who was due to return to London at midnight.
For two arduous hours he was closeted with the Ambassador going through the various matters requiring attention, including several questions regarding the Consulates of Florence and Venice. A question had arisen in London of the advisability of reducing the Florence Consulate-General to a Vice-Consulate and making Livorno a Consulate-General in its place. Florence was without trade, while Livorno—or Leghorn as it is known to the English—was full of shipping and other interests. Florence had too long been practically a sinecure, and its Consul-General a picturesque figure, hence the question afoot—the Ambassador being asked to write his opinion upon the proposed reduction.
Durrant, the Councillor of Embassy, being absent in England on leave, it devolved upon Waldron to attend to the clerical duties, and it was nearly six o’clock ere he had sealed the last dispatch and placed it in the small Foreign Office bag of white canvas.
Then the Ambassador questioned him upon the latest phase of his inquiry, but to all questions he was discreetly evasive—even to his own Chief.
Hubert Waldron was never optimistic, though he felt that already he was on the track of the thief.