THE THIRD COURSE
THE Prince came forward. "What a delightful surprise!" he exclaimed.
"How good of you both to look me up! But I wish my prophetic soul had
hinted to me that it would have been well to delay dinner. We have
just reached the third course."
His eyes met the Chancellor's, then hid a twinkle under lashes that a
professional beauty might have envied. "You must honour me by dining
with us," he went on. "All will be ready in a moment, and I keep a man
here whose _bisque d'écrevisse_ is not half bad."
"Thanks," said Maximilian, "we cannot dine. Our visit is purely one of
business, and a moment will see it finished. We owe you an explanation
for intruding upon you in this manner." He paused; all his
calculations were upset by Von Markstein's triumph; deliberately to
plan beforehand what he would do if he should find Miss de Courcy in
this man's house would have been to insult her. He had merely arranged
a campaign in the event of the Chancellor's defeat. Now, the one
course which appealed to him was frankness. He did not look at the
girl, though he saw her, and her alone, with his eyes coldly fixed
upon the Prince. He knew that she had risen, not in haste, as one who
is detected and ashamed, but with a leisured and dainty dignity, as if
concerned only to respect his rank. Her face was turned toward him
now; he felt it--as a blind man may feel the rising of the sun--though
still he would not look. No longer ago than last night at this hour
they had been together in the garden at Schloss Lynarberg; he had held
her in his arms; she had made him think she loved him. She had acted
an agony of resentment because he had offered her his heart in his
left hand. Now she was here with this butterfly who flitted through
life in a rose-garden of pretty women. They had been laughing and
talking before they were interrupted--these two at the dinner-table.
The champagne glass beside her plate was half-full. On the plate was
fish, with a pink sauce; she had been enjoying her dinner in the
Prince's company. Maximilian was not conscious that he had seen and
noted all these trifling details which, together, proved her a
soulless thing, light and worthless as a piece of thistledown yet each
one was like a separate poisoned thorn that rankled in his flesh.
His pause, his search for the words of explanation which he had
volunteered was really brief--scarcely so long as to count for a pause
at all; yet he had aged in it. He felt that youth and the joy of life
had fallen from him like a mantle, since he stepped across the
threshold.
"I have spent some hours to-day," he said, "in looking for this lady.
I was told that I should find her in your company. I came, and brought
Count von Markstein, to prove to him that he was mistaken. Instead,
_my_ mistake has been proved to his satisfaction, since Miss de Courcy
is here."
"Miss de Courcy is not here," broke in the girl, speaking for the
first time. "I have reason to believe that she is in India."
"I would to heaven that you were with her or anywhere on earth but
where you are!" cried the Emperor. He turned to the Prince. "You have
my explanation," he said. "It remains only for Count von Markstein and
me to bid you and this lady good-night."
The twinkle had died out of the Prince's eyes, and they sparkled with
another light. The scene, though planned, had not been rehearsed; and
the effect upon himself, now that it came to be acted, differed from
his expectations. His quick temper, never too fast asleep to wake at
the first call, sprang up under the look in Maximilian's eyes.
"You'll not bid her good-night in that manner, if you please," he
angrily began, when the girl, catching his arm, cut him short. The
familiar way in which she touched the gay young Apollo, resting
against his shoulder, sent a red-hot dart of pain through Maximilian's
nerves, and he scorned himself for it, because his love ought already
to have been uprooted, like a noxious weed.
"Wait, wait!" she cried. "This is my affair, please. You see, the
difficulty is that the Emperor doesn't know who I am, and----"
"It is time I told him!" exclaimed the Prince.
"Let the Chancellor do that," said she. "I can see he is dying to. And
as he has taken a great deal of trouble, he deserves some reward."
"I have already informed His Imperial Majesty that he would find with
the Prince Miss Minnie Brand, an English actress"--the old man bowed,
sneering--"justly famous for her talents."
"And His Majesty. What does he say?" The girl's voice sounded anxious
now, even wistful. She still stood beside the Prince, but her eyes so
appealed to Maximilian's that he could not withhold them, granting her
at last a cold and fixed regard.
"I say nothing," he answered. "You have left me nothing to say. You
are the Prince's friend. You do not need anything that I can give."
"Yet last night," she cried, "you said you loved me."
"Is this the place to remind me of that?" he demanded fiercely.
"Yes; because I came here hoping that you would follow. I _do_ care
for the Prince; I should be very ungrateful if I didn't; but I care
far more for _you_."
The boldness of the announcement, its astounding impertinence, coming
as it did, when and where it did, was like a smart box upon the ear,
literally staggering Maximilian. Sparks danced before his eyes. He
opened his lips to answer her with deadly bitterness, but did not
speak. With one look, that pent-up all the passion of outraged love,
and a fury of disappointment that was and must ever be unutterable, he
turned upon his heel.
"You would go and leave me here?" exclaimed the girl.
He wheeled round in the doorway. "I am not sure how to address you,"
he said, "since you no longer claim the name by which I have thought
of you, nor do I seem any longer to know you. But if there be the
slightest doubt in your mind as to your desire to stay here, I--Count
von Markstein and--I would gladly place our carriage at your service."
She ran to him, holding out both hands, like a child who asks
indulgence. "If I can explain," she said, with quickening breath, her
eyes shining, star-like, "if I tell you that it is quite, quite a
mistake, that there was no thought of harm in my coming to this house,
that I am true to all you thought me, to all I _hope_ you thought me,
will you believe my word?"
Maximilian looked her in the eyes and straightway forgot that he and
she were not alone. And the Chancellor saw that he forgot, and wished
much to remind him of many things connected with his own presence. But
even he dared not speak at that instant, and had to listen, biting his
lip with a well-preserved tooth.
"Believe your word!" the Emperor echoed slowly. He would have said,
"Why should I believe it, when it is enough that I believe my eyes?"
But he was gazing into hers, and so he could not say it. No other
woman's eyes had ever before had power to play tricks with his will,
therefore he was the more ready to fall under the spell of hers. "I
must believe it!" he pronounced. "It is death to doubt you. Tell me
you are all I thought you, show me how it can be so, and I will
believe in spite of everything."
"Your Majesty!" groaned the Chancellor. But His Majesty did not hear.
It was the Prince who drowned the warning.
"Oh, come!" he exclaimed; "this is going farther than I bargained for.
I can't stand all this talk about doubting and proving. The whole
thing----"
"Is for me to explain, not you," broke in Sylvia. "It is my right. I
will not have it taken from me. Maximilian, last night you said that
you cared for me, or--this would never have happened. A few moments
ago you asked if the Prince's hunting-lodge were a fit place for me to
remind you of that, and I answered yes. It was not time to tell you
why, then, but it is time now. I said that this was the proper place,
because it is my brother's house, and if we are ever to be anything to
one another, it is fitting that my brother should put my hand in
yours."
"At last, then, I can introduce my sister, Princess Sylvia of
Eltzburg-Neuwald," ejaculated the Crown Prince of Abruzzia, with a
sigh of overwhelming relief.
* * * * *
For a moment nobody spoke. The room seemed to ring with Friedrich's
words, with the name which, till now, had held so little music for
Maximilian's ears. He heard it and was speechless, even as the
Chancellor was speech less. He looked at Friedrich, as if he would
have spoken; he looked at Sylvia, and forgot to speak. She held out
her hands once more, and with an impulse which he did not strive to
control, he went down upon one knee as he caught and kissed them.
Long ago she had vowed that he should bend the knee to her, if he were
to win her; but now that the prophecy proved true, she bade him rise
as he whispered the one word "Forgive!"
"Oh, it is I who must be forgiven!" she said, with tears instead of
triumph in her voice. "You don't half understand yet."
Friedrich and Count von Markstein stole from the room and were not
missed. Their parts were played.
"I want no explanation," Maximilian answered. "I want only you."
"I won't try to tell you how it all began--not now. But my ears tingle
still with some words which my actions gave you the right to speak,"
she urged. "Last night I wanted to go into a convent, and, above all
things, I wished to get away from Rhaetia. We were forced to wait,
because of Miss M'Pherson's illness. When Count von Markstein called,
we excused ourselves. But when Fritz's card came up, it was different.
We couldn't guess whether or not he really knew who we were. His face
of surprise showed us he _didn't_. At first he was going to be
secretive; but Fritz isn't good at fibs, unless he's had time to
prepare them; and a plot he'd just been concocting with the Chancellor
all came out. The truth was, he'd taken me for an actress with whom
I'm afraid he'd been flirting in Abruzzia. It seems he'd informed her
that there might one day be something between his sister and the
Emperor of Rhaetia; she knew, too, that the real De Courcys were
Fritz's cousins, for she'd met them when acting in Calcutta.
Altogether, for these and other reasons, he fancied I might be Miss
Brand, seeking revenge for a slight by humiliating his sister. Imagine
how he felt when he saw _me_! And here's the point where Count von
Markstein turned into my guardian angel, instead of driving me from
Eden with a flaming sword. He'd told Fritz that you were searching for
Mary de Courcy to _ask her to be the Empress_. At this, from being the
most miserable, I became the happiest girl on earth. I forgave Fritz,
he forgave me, and--I at last induced him to let the plot be carried
out to the end. I hadn't doubted what that end would be till you came
into this room and I saw the look in your eyes. It was like a dagger
of ice in my heart. Tell me you forgive me for everything. Tell me
that, if I'd been different, and content with conventionalities, you
would not have loved me more."
He took her in his arms, and held her as if he would never let her go.
"If you had been different, I would not have loved you at all," he
said. "Yet if things had been different, I could not have helped but
love you, just the same. I should have been bound to fall in love with
Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald at first sight, as I fell in love
with Mary de Courcy."
"Ah, but at best you would have fallen in love with Sylvia because it
was your duty. And you fell in love with Mary because it was your duty
not to. Which makes it so much better."
"It was no question of duty, but of fate," the Emperor persisted. "The
stars ordained that I should love you."
"Then I wish"--and Sylvia laughed happily, as she could afford to
laugh now--"that the stars had told me last summer. It would have
saved me a great deal of trouble. And yet I don't know," she added
more slowly. "It has been a wonderful adventure. We shall think of it
when we are old."
"We shall never be old, for we love each other," said the Emperor.
THE END