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The nuptial mass had been fixed for eight o'clock, the wedding party were to breakfast at Almouth House afterwards, then the bride and groom were to leave by the mail for Southampton en route for Miraflores in Northern France. The two young men drove together to the chapel attached to the Alberian Embassy.
She never speaks of Robert, and she shuts herself up in her room reciting Marivaux and Molière. The d'Alchingens have invited her to Hadley next Saturday. They encourage her theatrical ideas. And why? They wish her to lose caste. She is an Archduchess, Sara, an Alberian Archduchess. What a living argument against unequal marriages!" "Will she go to Hadley?" "Yes wholly against my advice.
Reckage was dining at home that evening with Orange, whose marriage was to take place at the Alberian Embassy on the morrow.
Affairs in Alberia cannot long remain in this violent state. There must be a dénouement." I answered him sharply. "You know quite well that the Archduchess can never hope for official recognition from any Alberian Ministry let alone the sovereigns of Europe.
Parflete's agent was now in communication with Robert's solicitors; he himself was known to be in London, and he had even been seen dining with foreigners at one of the small private hotels near the Strand. The Alberian Ambassador informed Mr. Disraeli that there was nothing to fear because Parflete was not ambitious.
As the member of a great Russian house, she was especially attractive to Alberian speculation, but her beauty and cleverness no doubt assisted the Ambassador's determination to make himself agreeable.
It may suit her purpose to agree." "What! A woman who loves, or who has loved Robert Orange? A few things in human nature are still impossible." Prince d'Alchingen shrugged his shoulders, and continued "Parflete has a good back-stairs knowledge of Alberian politics. We never deny this, but we always add that he was dismissed, in disgrace, from the Imperial Household."
On the news, properly authenticated, of Parflete's suicide on Lord Soham's yacht, I visited England and had interviews with the Archduchess herself, with M. de Hausée at Catesby, and with Baron Zeuill at Claridge's Hotel. The proofs of Parflete's death were in perfect order, and the marriage between M. de Hausée and H.I.H. took place in the Chapel of the Alberian Embassy.
Our conversation was purely in connection with H.I.H.'s money matters, although he said with great firmness at the close, "The Archduchess will never embarrass Alberian affairs. Her taste is not for Courts or politics." I know this is his true conviction, but he is in love, and he measures her by his own unselfishness. He won my heart strangely.
I laboured to convince him that he would forfeit the respect of all honourable men unless he showed some just resentment at his wife's conduct. "No one respects me as it is," he answered; "nobody cares what I do one way or the other so long as I avoid the police. And as the police and I have nothing at all in common, I am not likely to give offence to my good friends in the Alberian Government."
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