“Then will you actually remain a victim and keep silence, allowing these people to thus misjudge you?” he asked in a tone of reproach.
“To bring opprobrium upon my husband is to bring scandal upon the Court and nation,” was her answer. “I am still Crown Princess, and I have still my duty to perform towards the people.”
“You are a woman of such high ideals, Princess,” he said, accepting her reproof. “Most other wives who have been treated as you have would have sought to retaliate.”
“Why should I? My husband is but the weak-principled puppet of a scandalous Court. It is not his own fault. He is goaded on by those who fear that I may reign as Queen.”
“Few women would regard him in such a very generous light,” Leitolf remarked, still stunned by the latest plot which she had revealed. If there was an ingenious conspiracy to confine her in an asylum, then surely it would be an easy matter for the very fact of her flight to be misconstrued into insanity. They would tear her child from her, and imprison her, despairing and brokenhearted. The thought of it goaded him to desperation. She told him of her intention of returning to her father, the Archduke Charles, and of living in future in her old home at Wartenstein—that magnificent castle of which they both had such pleasant recollections.
“And I shall be in Rome,” he sighed. “Ah, Princess, I shall often think of you, often and often.”
“Never write to me, I beg of you, Carl,” she said apprehensively. “Your letter might fall into other hands, and certainly would be misunderstood. The world at large does not believe in platonic friendship between man and woman, remember.”
“True,” he murmured. “That is why they say that you and I are still lovers, which is a foul and abominable lie.” Their eyes met, and she saw a deep, earnest look in his face that told her that he was thinking still of those days long ago, and of that giddy intoxication of heart and sense which belongs to the novelty of passion which we feel once, and but once, in our lives.
At that moment the train came to a standstill at the little station of Gratzen, and, unnoticed by them, a man passed the carriage and peered in inquisitively. He was a thick-set, grey-bearded, hard-faced German, somewhat round-shouldered, rather badly dressed, who, leaning heavily upon his stick, walked with the air of an invalid.
He afterwards turned quickly upon his heel and again limped past, gazing in, so as to satisfy himself that he was not mistaken.