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Greetings over, and having requested that his tea be half milk, with four lumps of sugar, he carried his cup over beside Hedwig, and sat down on a chair. Followed a short silence, with the Archduchess busy with the tea-things, Olga Loschek watching Karl, and Karl intently surveying the Crown Prince. Ferdinand William Otto, who disliked a silence, broke it first.
And" he sat very erect and swung his short legs "when I grow up, I shall fight for a navy, if I want one, and I shall marry whoever I like." At a quarter to four Olga Loschek was announced. She made the curtsy inside the door that Palace ceremonial demanded and inquired for the governess. Prince Ferdinand William Otto, who had risen at her entrance, offered to see if she still slept.
"I know, perhaps better than you think, Highness." Also something like Karl's words. Hedwig reflected with bitterness that everybody knew, but nobody helped her. And, as if in answer to the thought, Olga Loschek came out plainly. "Highness," she said, "may I speak to you frankly?" "Please do," Hedwig replied. "Everybody does, anyhow. Especially when it is something disagreeable."
He was not very clear himself as to how it happened. He had been tricked. But that was no excuse. And in the midst of her appeal to him to save himself, he broke in to ask where Olga Loschek was. Hedwig drew herself up. "I do not know," she said, rather coldly. "But after all," Nikky muttered, thinking of the lady-in-waiting, "escape is cut off. The Palace is surrounded."
She followed the announcement almost immediately, and if she had shown cowardice before, she showed none now. She disregarded the chair Olga Loschek offered, and came to the point with a directness that was like the King's. "I have come," she said simply, "to find out what to do." The Countess was as direct. "I cannot tell you what to do, Highness. I can only tell you what I would do."
Bedtime being the one rule which was never under any circumstances broken, he did not persist. To have insisted might have meant five off in Miss Braithwaite's book, and his record was very good that week. Together the elderly Englishwoman and the boy went back to the schoolroom. The Countess Loschek, who had dressed with a heavy heart, was easily the most beautiful of the women that night.
This afternoon she was not alone. Lounging at a window was the lady who was in waiting at the time, the Countess Loschek. Just now she was getting rather a wigging, but she was remarkably calm. "The last three times," the Archduchess said, stirring her tea, "you have had a sore throat." "It is such a dull book," explained the Countess. "Not at all. It is an improving book.
Even this last June, when Karl had made his looked-for visit to the summer palace where the Court had been in, residence, he had already had the thing in mind. Even when his arms had been about her, Olga Loschek, he had been looking over her shoulder, as it were, at Hedwig. He had had it all in his wicked head, even then. For Karl was wicked.
He had slept well, and wakened to a sense of well-being. But, during the afternoon, he became uneasy. Olga Loschek haunted him, her face when he had told her about the letter, her sagging figure when he had left her. Something like remorse stirred in him. She had taken great risks for him. Of all the women he had known, she had most truly and unselfishly loved him.
Then the formal proposal, and its acceptance. Hedwig would marry Karl. She might be troublesome, would indeed almost certainly be troublesome. Strangely enough, the Countess hated her the more for that. To value so lightly the thing for which Olga Loschek would have given her soul, this in itself was hateful. But there was more.
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