Her pale lips moved, but no sound came from them.
She was fervent in prayer.
Her countenance, her movements, her attitude showed her to be in a veritable tumult of agony and despair. But she was alone, with none to witness her terrible anxiety, and the blank hopelessness of it all.
She had been wondering ever since she had regained consciousness on the previous night what had really occurred in the room of the Minister of the Royal Household—whether the British diplomat, her friend, had also been discovered there in her company. She had questioned the maids, but they had been instructed by Ghelardi and refused to satisfy her curiosity.
Therefore she was in ignorance of what had happened after the receipt of that fatal message from Brussels.
How she had passed that day of feverish anxiety she knew not. Every second had to her seemed an hour.
At last, after crossing herself devoutly, she rose from her knees wearily, when her eyes fell upon the clock.
Instantly she began to take off her splendid evening gown. Her diamonds she unclasped and tossed them unheeded into a velvet-lined casket on the big dressing-table, together with her bracelets and the ornament from her corsage.
Then, kicking off her evening slippers, she exchanged her pale blue silk stockings for stout ones of black cashmere, and putting on a pair of serviceable country boots, she afterwards opened her wardrobe and took out a dingy costume of blue serge—one of Renata’s.
This she hastily donned, and taking down her hair, deftly arranged it so that when she put on the little black bonnet she produced from a locked box, she was in a quarter of an hour transformed from a princess to a demure, neatly-dressed lady’s maid.