And next instant she moved onward towards the raised dais where His Majesty was standing chatting with Sir Francis Cathcart.
In obedience Hubert made his way by a circuitous route, first through the great winter-garden, where many couples were sitting out, and then through that long suite of heavily gilded State apartments comprising fourteen magnificent chambers, each ornamented with wonderful tapestries and paintings, and full of historic associations from the days of Gregory XIII. Generations of courtiers had paced those oaken floors until now, in our twentieth century, those who trod them were the embodiment of selfishness, of avarice, and of vain glorification.
Ah! what a brilliant, glittering, tinselled world of sham and subterfuge, of resplendent plutocracy, and adventurous politics, is each of the European Courts of to-day—that of our own St. James’s not excepted. The shameful traffic in titles goes on unchecked everywhere, and many a man who struts about with a piece of gilded ironmongery upon his breast and a handle to his name ought if he obtained his deserved merits, to have more strongly forged ironmongery upon his wrists and eat the bread of a felon’s cell. Their Excellencies who are Ministers, too, are many of them hypocrites and adventurers, who swell the purses from the public funds, or, by means of their previous knowledge of legislation, make coups upon the Bourse. Corruption is rife everywhere, the public are gulled by the Press, and the religion of to-day is, alas! the worship of the great god, Gold.
Beyond the blue drawing-room, with its many portraits of Sovereigns and Princes, where only a few of the more elderly people were chattering, Hubert passed down two long corridors, quite deserted save for the sentries, and at length approached a small side door which led to the Paolina Chapel—the private chapel of the Quirinale.
He was quite alone, and stood listening in expectation. From the courtyard below came up the sounds of motor-cars and the tramp of the Palace guard, while in the faint distance he could hear the strains of music.
Suddenly, however, he saw a figure in white approaching, and a moment later Lola was at his side.
“Follow me,” she said hastily. “Follow me at a distance—to Villanova’s room. No one will be there.”
General Villanova was Minister of the Royal Household.
And she went on, he lounging leisurely after her at a distance.
A couple of minutes afterwards he found himself with her in a small room where a coal fire burned brightly—the private office of the Controller of the Household.