“I shall act, signore, just as I think fit.”
“No doubt, in order to curry favour with His Majesty you will give a lurid picture of what you have witnessed,” exclaimed Hubert. “Well, do so—at your own peril.”
As he spoke two maids entered, accompanied by the sentry.
“Her Royal Highness has fainted,” Ghelardi explained, pointing to the prostrate figure upon the couch. “You, sentry, had better go in search of Doctor Mellini. He is probably in his rooms. You know where they are—close to the principal entrance. Tell your captain—he will soon find him.”
“Si, signore,” was the man’s answer, as he raised his hand to the salute, turned again and left.
The two maids in their artistic pale grey caps and aprons—the uniform worn by all the female servants of the Palace—dashed across to the young Princess. Then one of them left and ran away for her own smelling-salts.
“I think we had better leave Her Highness. She will be attended to and taken to her rooms,” Ghelardi said.
So the two men went out together, passing along the corridor which led towards the grand staircase.
Hubert was pondering. He saw that the situation was, both for Lola and himself, a very unpleasant one. Ghelardi would, without a doubt, inform the King. Since he had been appointed to Rome he had learnt that the notorious spy was, in addition to being a most remarkable man in his profession, at the same time a place-seeker of the worst type, a soft-spoken sycophant who was for ever closeted with the King.
That His Majesty, with his shrewd intuition and his instinctive reading of men’s minds, had realised this, had been shown by the fact that he had called in the British diplomat to make inquiries into the serious loss of the plans of the frontier fortresses.