“Listen, Ferdinand, and I will tell you the truth—the whole truth,” she said very earnestly. “You will remember the narrow escape I had that day when my cob shied at a motor car and ran away, and a stranger—an Englishman—stopped the animal, and was so terribly injured that he had to be conveyed to the hospital, and remained there some weeks in a very precarious state. And he afterwards disappeared, without waiting for me to thank him personally?”
“Yes; I remember hearing something about him.”
“It is that man—the criminal,” she declared; and then, in quick, breathless sentences, she explained how her jewels had been stolen in Paris, and how, when the thieves knew of her identity, the bag had been restored to her intact. He listened to every word in silence, wondering. The series of romantic incidents held him surprised. They were really gallant and gentlemanly thieves, if—if nothing else, he declared.
“To this Mr Bourne I owe my life,” she said; “and to him I also owe the return of my jewels. Is it, therefore, any wonder when these two men, Bourne and Redmayne, have showed me such consideration, that, lonely as I am, I should regard them as friends? I have Redmayne’s daughter with me here, as maid. She is below, with Ignatia. It is this Mr Bourne, who is engaged to be married to Leucha Redmayne, that Hinckeldeym seeks to denounce as my lover!”
“He says that both men are guilty of theft within the Empire; indeed, Bourne is, it is said, guilty of jewel robbery in Eugendorf.”
“They have both been arrested at Hinckeldeym’s instigation, and are now in London, remanded before being extradited here.”
“Oh! he has not lost very much time, it seems.”
“No. His intention is that Mr Bourne shall stand his trial here, in Treysa, and at the same time the prisoner is to be denounced by inspired articles in the press as my lover—that I, Queen of Marburg, have allied myself with a common criminal! Cannot you see his dastardly intention? He means that this, his last blow, his master stroke, shall crush me, and break my power for ever,” she cried desperately. “You, Ferdinand, will give me justice—I know you will! I am still your wife!” she implored. “You will not allow their foul lies and insinuations to influence you further; will you?” she asked. “In order to debase me in your eyes and in the eyes of all Europe, Hinckeldeym has caused the arrest of this man to whom I owe my life—the man who saved me, not because I was Crown Princess, but because I was merely a woman in peril. Think what betrayal and arrest means to these men. It means long terms of imprisonment to both. And why? Merely in order to attack me—because I am their friend. They may be guilty of theft—indeed they admit they are; nevertheless I ask you to give them your clemency, and to save them. You can have them brought here for trial; and there are ways, technicalities of the law, or something, by which their release can be secured. A King may act as he chooses in his own Kingdom.”
Every word she spoke was so worthy of herself, so full of sentiment and beauty, poetry and passion. Too naturally frank for disguise, too modest to confess her depth of love while the issue remained in suspense, it was a conflict between love and fear and dignity.
“I think you ask me rather too much, Claire,” he said, in a somewhat quieter tone. “You ask me to believe all that you tell me, without giving me any proof whatsoever.”