"Will your Majesty pardon me? I have orders from the Minister Hinckeldeym to say that he is waiting in the blue anteroom, and wishes to see you instantly upon your arrival."

"Then he knows of my return?" she exclaimed surprised.

"Your Majesty was expected by him since yesterday." She saw that his spies had telegraphed news of her departure from London.

"And the King is in the palace?"

"Yes, your Majesty; he is in his private cabinet," responded the man, bowing.

"Then I will go to him. I will see Hinckeldeym afterwards."

"But, your Majesty, I have strict orders not to allow your Majesty to pa.s.s until you have seen his Excellency. See, here he comes!"

And as she turned she saw approaching up the long marble hall a fat man, her arch-enemy, attired in funereal, black.

"Your Majesty!" he said, bowing, while an evil smile played upon his lips. "So you have returned to us at Treysa! Before seeing the King I wish to speak to you in private."

Deadly and inexorable malice was in his countenance. She turned upon him with a quick fire in her eyes, answering with that hauteur that is inherent in the Hapsbourg blood,--

"Whatever you have to say can surely be said here. You can have nothing concerning me to conceal!" she added meaningly.

"I have something to say that cannot be said before the palace servants," he exclaimed quickly. "I forbid you to go to the King before I have had an opportunity of explaining certain matters."

"Oh! you forbid--_you_?" she cried, turning upon him in resentment at his laconic insolence. "And pray, who are you?--a mere paid puppet of the State, a political adventurer who discerns further advancement by being my enemy! And you _forbid_?"

"Your Majesty--I--"

"Yes; when addressing me do not forget that I am your Queen," she said firmly, "and that I know very well how to deal with those who have endeavoured to encompa.s.s my ruin. Now go to your fellow-adventurers, Stuhlmann, Hoepfner, and the rest, and give them my message." Every word of hers seemed to blister where it fell. Then turning to Leucha, she said in English,--

"Remain here with Ignatia. I will return to you presently."

And while the fat-faced officer of State who had so ingeniously plotted her downfall stood abashed in silence, and confused at her defiance, she swept past him, mounted the stairs haughtily, and turning into the corridor, made her way to the royal apartments.

Outside the door of the King's private cabinet--that room wherein Hinckeldeym had introduced his spies--she held her breath. She was helpless at once, and desperate. Her hand trembled upon the door k.n.o.b, and the sentry, recognising her, started, and stood at attention.

With sudden resolve she turned the handle, and next second stood erect in the presence of her husband.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

A WOMAN'S WORDS.

The King sprang up from his writing-table as though electrified.

"You!" he gasped, turning pale and glaring at her--"you, Claire! Why are you here?" he demanded angrily.

"To speak with you, Ferdinand. That scheming reptile Hinckeldeym forbade me to see you; but I have defied him--and have come to you."

"Forbade you! why?" he asked, in a deep voice, facing her, and at once noticing that she was disguised as Henriette.

"Because he fears that I may expose his ingenious intrigue to you. I have discovered everything, and I have come to you, my husband, to face you, and to answer any charges that this man may bring against me. I only ask for justice," she added, in a low, earnest voice. "I appeal to you for that, for the sake of our little Ignatia; for the sake of my own good name, not as Queen, but as a woman!"

"Then Hinckeldeym was aware that you were returning?"

"His spies, no doubt, telegraphed information that I had left London.

He was awaiting me in the blue anteroom when I arrived, ten minutes ago."

"He told me nothing," her husband remarked gruffly, knitting his brows in marked displeasure.

"Because he fears the revelation of his dastardly plot to separate us, and to hurl me down to the lowest depths of infamy and shame."

Her husband was silent; his eyes were fixed upon hers. Only yesterday he had called Meyer, the Minister of Justice, and given orders for an application to the Court for a divorce. Hinckeldeym, by continually pointing out the Imperial displeasure in Vienna, had forced him to take this step. He had refrained as long as he could, but at last had been forced to yield.

As far as government was concerned, Hinckeldeym was, he considered, an excellent Minister; yet since that night when the man had introduced his spies, he had had his shrewd suspicions aroused that all he had told him concerning Claire was not the exact truth. Perhaps, after all, he had harshly misjudged her. Such, indeed, was the serious thought that had a thousand times of late been uppermost in his mind--ever since, indeed, he had given audience to the Minister Meyer on the previous morning.

Claire went on, shining forth all her sweet, womanly self. Her intellectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high honourable principles, her best feelings as a woman, all were displayed. She maintained at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her point in the end; and yet there was, nevertheless, a painful, heart-thrilling uncertainty. In her appeal, however, was an irresistible and solemn pathos, which, falling upon her husband's heart, caused him to wonder, and to stand open-mouthed before her.

"You allege, then, that all this outrageous scandal that has been the talk of Europe has been merely invented by Hinckeldeym and his friends?"

asked the King, folding his arms firmly and fixing his eyes upon his wife very seriously.

"I only ask you, Ferdinand, to hear the truth, and as Sovereign to render justice where justice is due," was her calm response, her pale face turned to his. "I was too proud in my own honesty as your wife to appeal to you: indeed, I saw that it was hopeless, so utterly had you fallen beneath the influence of my enemies. So I preferred to leave the Court, and to live incognito as an ordinary person."

"But you left Treysa with Leitolf, the man who was your lover! You can't deny that, eh?" he snapped.

"I deny it, totally and emphatically," was her response, facing him unflinchingly. "Carl Leitolf loved me when I was a child, but years before my marriage with you I had ceased to entertain any affection for him. He, however, remained my friend--and he is still my friend."

"Then you don't deny that to-day he is really your friend?" he said, with veiled sarcasm.

"Why should I? Surely there is nothing disgraceful that a man should show friendliness and sympathy towards a woman who yearns for her husband's love, and is lonely and unhappy, as I have been? Again, I did not leave Treysa with him. He joined my train quite by accident, and we travelled to Vienna together. He left me at the station, and I have not seen him since."

"When you were in Vienna, a few days before, you actually visited him at his hotel?"

"Certainly; I went to see him just as I should call upon any other friend. I recognised the plot against us, and arranged with him that he should leave the Court and go to Rome."

"I don't approve of such friends," he snapped again quickly.

"A husband should always choose his wife's male friends. I am entirely in your hands, Ferdinand."

"But surely you know that a thousand and one scandalous stories have been whispered about you--not only in the palace, but actually among the people. The papers, even, have hinted at your disgraceful and outrageous behaviour."

"And I have nothing whatever to be ashamed of. You, my husband, I face boldly to-night, and declare to you that I have never, for one single moment, forgotten my duty either to you or to our child," she said, in a very low, firm voice, hot tears at that moment welling in her beautiful eyes. "I am here to declare my innocence--to demand of you justice, Ferdinand!"

His lips were pressed together. He was watching her intently, noticing how very earnestly and how very boldly she refuted those statements which, in his entire ignorance of the conspiracy, he had believed to be scandalous truths. Was it really possible that she, his wife, whom all Europe had admired for her grace, her sweetness, and her extraordinary beauty, was actually a victim of a deeply-laid plot of Hinckeldeym's?

To him it seemed utterly impossible. She was endeavouring, perhaps, to shield herself by making these counter allegations. A man, he reflected, seldom gets even with a woman's ingenuity.

"Hinckeldeym has recently revealed to me something else, Claire," he said, speaking very slowly, his eyes still fixed upon hers--"the existence of another lover, an interesting person who, it appears, is a criminal!"

"Listen, Ferdinand, and I will tell you the truth--the whole truth," she said very earnestly. "You will remember the narrow escape I had that day when my cob shied at a motor car and ran away, and a stranger--an Englishman--stopped the animal, and was so terribly injured that he had to be conveyed to the hospital, and remained there some weeks in a very precarious state. And he afterwards disappeared, without waiting for me to thank him personally?"