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And marrying was one of them. Something of old Mettlich's creed of prosperity for the land he gave, something of his own hopelessness, too, without knowing it. He sat, bent forward, his hands swung between his knees, and tried to visualize, for Otto's understanding and his own heartache, the results of such a marriage. Some of it the boy grasped.
You may recall that his mother " He stopped. Perhaps the old King's memory was good. Perhaps there was a change in Mettlich's voice. "A good boy?" "None better, sire. He is devoted to His Royal Highness. He is still much of a lad himself. I have listened to them talking. It is a question which is the older! He is outside now." "Bring him in. I'll have a look at him."
It was Karl's turn to be startled. He rose, and stood staring down at her. "Are you certain of that?" "Certain!" She laughed bitterly. "The Terrorists Revolutionists, they call themselves are everywhere. They know everything, see everything. Mettlich's agents are disappearing one by one. No one knows where, but all suspect. Student meetings are prohibited.
And at the vision it evoked, Mettlich's horror and rage, Hedwig's puling tears, her own triumph, she took a deep breath. Revenge with a vengeance, retaliation for old hurts and fresh injuries, these were what she found on her knees, while the bell in the valley commenced the mass, and a small boy; very rapt and very earnest, prayed for his grandfather's life.
Mobilization might precipitate the crisis, and there was always the fear that the army, in parts, was itself disloyal. It was Marschall, always nervous and now pallid with terror, who suggested abandoning the marriage between Hedwig and Karl. "Until this matter came up," he said, avoiding Mettlich's eyes, "there was danger, but of a small party only, the revolutionary one.
How say to a dying man that time was the one thing he did not have? "Another thing. She was incoherent, but I gathered that there was some one else. The whole interview was cyclonic. It seems, however, that this young protege of yours, Larisch, has been making love to her over Otto's head." Mettlich's face hardened, a gradual process, as the news penetrated in all its significance.
Then his eyes turned to Annunciata and rested there. It was as if he saw her, not as the embittered woman of late years, but as the child of the woman he had loved. "A good friend, and a good daughter," he said clearly. "Few men die so fortunate, and fewer sovereigns." His hand moved from Mettlich's head, and rested on the photograph. The elder Sister leaned forward and touched his wrist.
In the first were Annunciata, Hedwig, and the Countess, and at the last moment Otto had salvaged Miss Braithwaite from the second car, and begged a place for her with him. A police agent sat beside the chauffeur. Also another car, just ahead, contained other agents, by Mettlich's order before his departure a plain black motor, without the royal arms.
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