"Therefore," Olivia's words touched tranquilly among the flying ends of his own thought, "I am come before you to make that sacrifice which my love for my father, and my grief and my anxiety demand. I count upon your support, as he would count upon it for me. I ask that one heart be in us all in this common sorrow. And I am come with the unalterable determination both to renounce my throne there"—never was anything more enchanting than the way those two words fell from her lips—"and to postpone my marriage"—there never was anything more profoundly disquieting than those two words in such a connection—"until such time as, by your effort and by my own, we may have news of my father, the king; and until, by your effort or by my own, the Hereditary Treasure shall be restored."
So, serenely and with the most ingenuous confidence, did the daughter of the absent King Otho make disposition of the hour's events. Amory leaned forward and feverishly polished his pince-nez.
"What do you think of that?" he put it, beneath his breath, "what do you think of that?"
St. George, watching that little figure—so adorably, almost pathetically little in its corner of the great throne—knew that he had not counted upon her in vain. Over there on the raised seats Mrs. Medora Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham were looking on matters as helplessly as they would look at a thunder-storm or a circus procession, and they were taking things quite as seriously. But Olivia, in spite of the tragedy that the hour held for her, was giving the moment its exact value, guiltless of the feminine immorality of panic. To give a moment its due without that panic, is, St. George knew, a kind of genius, like creating beauty, and divining another's meaning, and redeeming the spirit of a thing from its actuality. But by that time the arithmetic of his love was by way of being in too many figures to talk about. Which is the proper plight of love.
Every one had turned toward Prince Tabnit, and as St. George looked it smote him whimsically that that impassive profile was like the profiles upon the ancient coins which, almost any day, might be cast up by a passing hoof on the island mold. Indeed, St. George thought, one might almost have spent the prince's profile at a fig-stall, and the vender would have jingled it among his silver and never have detected the cheat. But in the next moment the joyous mounting of his blood running riot in audacious whimsies was checked by the even voice of the prince himself.
"The gratitude and love of this people," he said slowly, "are due to the daughter of its sovereign for what she has proposed. It is, however, to be remembered that by our ancient law the State and every satrapy therein shall receive no service, whether of blood or of bond, from an alien. The king himself could serve us only in that he was king. To his daughter as Princess of Yaque and wife of the Head of the House of the Litany, this service in the search for the sovereign and the Hereditary Treasure will be permitted, but she may serve us only from the throne."
"Upon my soul, then that lets us out," murmured Amory.
And St. George remembered miserably how, in that dingy house in McDougle Street, he and Olivia had listened once before to the recital of that law from the prince's lips. If they had known how next they would hear it! If they had known then what that law would come to mean to her! What could she do now—what could even Olivia do now but assent?
She could do a great deal, it appeared. She could incline her head, with a bewitching droop of eyelids, and look up to meet the eyes of the prince with a serenity that was like a smile.
"In my country," said Olivia gravely, "when anything special arises they frequently find that there is no law to cover it. It would seem to us"—it was as though the humility of that "us" took from her superb daring—"that this is a matter requiring the advice of the High Council. Therefore," asked little Olivia gently, "will you not appoint, your Highness, a special session of the High Council to convene at noon to-morrow, to consider our proposition?"