“His spies, no doubt, telegraphed information that I had left London. He was awaiting me in the blue anteroom when I arrived, ten minutes ago.”
“He told me nothing,” her husband remarked gruffly, knitting his brows in marked displeasure.
“Because he fears the revelation of his dastardly plot to separate us, and to hurl me down to the lowest depths of infamy and shame.”
Her husband was silent; his eyes were fixed upon hers. Only yesterday he had called Meyer, the Minister of Justice, and given orders for an application to the Court for a divorce. Hinckeldeym, by continually pointing out the Imperial displeasure in Vienna, had forced him to take this step. He had refrained as long as he could, but at last had been forced to yield.
As far as government was concerned, Hinckeldeym was, he considered, an excellent Minister; yet since that night when the man had introduced his spies, he had had his shrewd suspicions aroused that all he had told him concerning Claire was not the exact truth. Perhaps, after all, he had harshly misjudged her. Such, indeed, was the serious thought that had a thousand times of late been uppermost in his mind—ever since, indeed, he had given audience to the Minister Meyer on the previous morning.
Claire went on, shining forth all her sweet, womanly self. Her intellectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high honourable principles, her best feelings as a woman, all were displayed. She maintained at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her point in the end; and yet there was, nevertheless, a painful, heart-thrilling uncertainty. In her appeal, however, was an irresistible and solemn pathos, which, falling upon her husband’s heart, caused him to wonder, and to stand open-mouthed before her.
“You allege, then, that all this outrageous scandal that has been the talk of Europe has been merely invented by Hinckeldeym and his friends?” asked the King, folding his arms firmly and fixing his eyes upon his wife very seriously.
“I only ask you, Ferdinand, to hear the truth, and as Sovereign to render justice where justice is due,” was her calm response, her pale face turned to his. “I was too proud in my own honesty as your wife to appeal to you: indeed, I saw that it was hopeless, so utterly had you fallen beneath the influence of my enemies. So I preferred to leave the Court, and to live incognito as an ordinary person.”
“But you left Treysa with Leitolf, the man who was your lover! You can’t deny that, eh?” he snapped.
“I deny it, totally and emphatically,” was her response, facing him unflinchingly. “Carl Leitolf loved me when I was a child, but years before my marriage with you I had ceased to entertain any affection for him. He, however, remained my friend—and he is still my friend.”