Her beautiful countenance, bruised and swollen, was an ugly sight; her mouth was cut, and one of her even, pretty teeth had been broken by the cowardly blow.
Henriette, the faithful Frenchwoman, had crept back to her mistress’s room an hour after the Crown Prince had gone, in order to see if her Highness wanted anything, when to her horror she discovered her lying insensible where she had been struck down.
The woman was discreet. She had often overheard the Prince’s torrents of angry abuse, and in an instant grasped the situation. Instead of alarming the other servants, she quickly applied restoratives, bathed her mistress’s face tenderly in eau de Cologne, washing away the blood from the mouth, and after half an hour succeeded in getting her comfortably to bed.
She said nothing to any one, but locked the door and spent the remainder of the night upon the sofa near her Princess.
While Claire was seated in her wrap, taking her chocolate at eight o’clock next morning, the Countess de Trauttenberg, her husband’s spy, who probably knew all that had transpired, entered with the engagement-book.
She saw what a terrible sight the unhappy woman presented, yet affected not to notice it.
“Well, Trauttenberg?” asked the Princess in a soft, weary voice, hardly looking up at her, “what are our engagements to-day?”
The lady-in-waiting consulted the book, which upon its cover bore the royal crown above the cipher “C,” and replied,—
“At eleven, the unveiling of the monument to Schilling the sculptor in the Albert-Platz; at one, luncheon with the Princess Alexandrine, to meet the Duchess of Brunswick-Lunebourg; at four, the drive; and to-night, ‘Faust,’ at the Opera.”
Her Highness sighed. The people, the enthusiastic crowd who applauded her, little knew how wearying was that round of daily duties, how soul-killing to a woman with a broken heart. She was “their Claire,” the woman who was to be their Queen, and they believed her to be happy!