Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: August 3, 2024
Hedwig had thrown up her head and looked at her with hostile eyes. But the next moment she had forgotten she was a princess, and the granddaughter to the King, and remembered only that she was a woman, and terror-stricken. She flung out her arms, and then buried her face in them. "How can I help it?" she said. "How can you do it?" Olga Loschek countered.
But that day he lay and slept, by curious irony the flower from Karl's banquet in a cup of water beside him. On the day before the Carnival, Hedwig had a visitor, none other than the Countess Loschek. Hedwig, all her color gone now, her high spirit crushed, her heart torn into fragments and neatly distributed between Nikky, who had most of it, the Crown Prince, and the old King.
Or Nikky's, either, for that matter. She, then, would lose everything, even Karl, who was already lost to her. But and her face grew set and her eyes hard she would let those plotters in their grisly catacombs do their own filthy work. Her hands would be clean of that. Hence her amusement that at this late day she, Olga Loschek, should be saving her own soul.
But a brave and steadfast and honorable one, be sure of that. What should we gain by following Olga Loschek, eating her heart out in England, or the Committee of Ten, cowering in its cells? They had failed, as the wicked, sooner or later, must fail. Or Karl, growing fat in a prosperous land, alike greedy for conquest and too indolent for battle? To finish the day, then, and close with midnight.
The war that followed the truce had seen her Karl's spy in Livonia. She had undertaken it that the burden of gratitude should be on him a false step, for men chafe under the necessity for gratitude. Then had come another peace, and his visit to the summer palace. There he had seen Hedwig, grown since his last visit to lovely girlhood, and having what Olga Loschek could never again possess, youth.
Very nearly did he swing the scale in which Olga Loschek had hung her bargain with God so nearly that in the intervals of affixing his sprawling signature to various documents, he drew a sheet of note-paper toward him. Then, with a shrug, he pushed it away. So Olga Loschek lost her bargain.
The villagers stood in excited but quiet groups, and watched. Then the two banners touched, the schoolboys turned, followed by the priests. Thus led, went the Crown Prince of Livonia to pray for his grandfather's life. The church doors closed behind them. Olga Loschek fell on her knees. She was shaking from head to foot.
But" he bent forward "the King will not live many days. It is our hope that that marriage will not occur before his death." By this time Olga Loschek knew very well where she stood. The Committee was propitiatory. She was not in danger, save as it might develop. They were, in a measure, putting their case. She had followed the speaker closely. When he paused, she was ready for him.
"Sit down," he said, "and tell me about it." But Nikky would not sit. He stood, looking straight ahead, and told the story. He left nothing out, the scene on the roof, his broken promise. "Although," he added, his only word of extenuation, "God knows I tried to keep it." Then the message from the Countess Loschek, and his long wait in her boudoir, to return to the thing he had found.
Olga Loschek watched her warily. She knew the family as only the outsider could know it; knew that Hedwig, who would have disclaimed the fact, was like her mother in some things, notably in a disposition to be mild until a certain moment, submissive, even acquiescent, and then suddenly to become, as it were, a royalty and grow cold, haughty.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking