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Scowling faces and frowning brows. But as yet there was no disorder. He sat with folded arms, magnificent in his uniform beside Karl, who wore civilian dress and looked less royal than perhaps he felt. And Karl, too, watched the crowd, feeling its temper and feigning an indifference he did not feel. Olga Loschek had been right. He did not want trouble.
And, outwardly, Karl did not change. He was still her ardent lover. But the times when they could meet were few. And the Court of Livonia heard rumors a gamekeeper's daughter, an actress in his own capital, these were but two of the many. Olga Loschek was clever. She never reproached him or brought him to task. She had felt that, whatever his lapses, the years had made her necessary to him.
He sat bent over the desk, the very tip of his tongue protruding, and worked conscientiously and carefully. Between each letter he burned a dot. Suddenly, Olga Loschek became panic-stricken. She could not stay, and see this thing out. Let them follow her and punish her. She could not. She had done her part. The governess lay in, a drugged sleep.
He kissed the hand of the Archduchess and bent over Hedwig's with a flash of white teeth. Then he saw Olga Loschek, and his smile stiffened. The Countess came forward, curtsied, and as he extended his hand to her, touched it lightly with her lips. They were quite cold. For just an instant their eyes met. It was, on the surface, an amiable and quiet teaparty.
Two lighted candles on a high carved chest, and between them a plaster figure of the Mother and Child, a built-in bed with white curtains that was the room. Before the open fire Olga Loschek sat in her low chair. She wore still her dark traveling dress; and a veil, ready to be donned at the summons of a message from Karl, trailed across her knee.
Thus was the student Haeckel, patriot and Royalist, led forth to die. And he did not die. The day when Olga Loschek should have returned to the city found her too ill to travel. No feigned sickness this, but real enough, a matter of fever and burning eyes, and of mutterings in troubled sleep. Minna was alarmed.
"Not so true as he would have you believe," replied Olga Loschek steadily. "There are malcontents everywhere, in every land. A few madmen who dream dreams, like Mettlich himself, only not the same dream. It is all ambition, one dream or another." "But my grandfather " "An old man, in the hands of his Ministers!" Hedwig rose and paced the floor, her fingers twisting nervously.
Miss Braithwaite was asleep on the couch in her sitting-room, deeply asleep, so that when Prince Ferdinand William Otto changed the cold cloth on her head, she did not even move. The Countess Loschek had brought her some medicine. "It cured her very quickly," said the Crown Prince, shuffling the cards with clumsy fingers. He and Nikky were playing a game in which matches represented money.
And thus it happened that Captain Nicholas Larisch aide-de-camp to his Royal Highness the Crown Prince Ferdinand William Otto, and of no other particular importance, was informed of the Princess Hedwig's projected marriage before she was. And not only informed of it, but committed to forward it, if he could! The Countess Loschek was alone. Alone and storming.
Then, instead of going to the wing where the Court was gathered, they would go up to Hubert's rooms, and from there to the roof and the secret passage. Two obstacles were left for the Countess to cope with, and this was her part of the work. She had already a plan for Miss Braithwaite. But Nikky Larisch? Over that problem, during the long night hours, Olga Loschek worked.
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