A Dash .. .. .. For a Throne Part 23

She came in very closely veiled, and very beautifully, if very showily, dressed.

"You wish to see me, madam? What is your name?"

She stood silent until the servant had left the room; and I looked at her with considerable curiosity.

"So you are the Prince von Gramberg. I trust your Highness is in excellent health."

Despite the mocking accent, I could recognize the voice, though I could not recall the speaker. It was certainly no one whom I ought to have known as the Prince von Gramberg, and I accordingly made ready for another unpleasant surprise.

"I am sorry I cannot recall your name. I think I have heard your voice; it is too sweet to forget."

It is never wrong to flatter a woman.

My visitor stamped her foot angrily.

"Yes, you know my voice, and used to like to hear it."

The little impatient angry gesture told me who she was--Clara Weylin, the actress, who had pestered my life out at Frankfort and had vowed to be revenged on me for slighting her.

I wondered what particular strain of ill luck had brought her across my path at this juncture, and I wished her and her pretty face and sweet voice at the other end of the earth.

The coils were indeed drawing closer round me.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ABDUCTION

For another week at least I dared not make an enemy of my altogether unexpected and vastly unwelcome visitor, so I answered her with a smile, and went to greet her with outstretched hand, as though glad enough to renew our old acquaintance.

"I know you now," I said cordially. "Of course it is my old friend and comrade Clara Weylin. This is an unexpected pleasure," said I warmly.

But she stepped back, and did not take my hand.

"Unexpected, no doubt; but pleasure, scarcely. You were not much of an actor at any time; but that would not take in a fool. You are very much astonished to see me, and equally angry; so you may as well acknowledge it."

She tapped her foot again angrily. Next she removed an outer veil, which she had of course put on to mystify me on her entrance; and she stood staring me in the face with a look of defiant hostility.

I shrugged my shoulders, and said:

"You are always more beautiful in a pa.s.sion, Clara; but I'm sorry to find you in one now with me. Won't you sit down and tell me all about yourself?"

And I recalled regretfully our last interview, and bitterly deplored my stupidity in not having answered her letter. An angry woman, knowing what she knew, could do no end of mischief at this juncture.

"The chief thing about myself, as you say," she exclaimed spitefully, "is that my feelings toward you have changed. I was your friend then, now I will be your enemy."

"Then I am very sorry to hear it"--and the tone was genuine enough.

"But, under the circ.u.mstances, why take the trouble to come and tell me so?"

"Because I wished to see your Highness, to observe how your Highness bore your great honors, and to bask in the radiant light of your Highness's eyes--ugh! Your Highness, indeed!"

I began to hope. Her bitterness was so very bitter that I thought some of it at least might be a.s.sumed.

"How do you play at that game, Clara?" I laughed. "While you are 'basking,' what should I do?"

"Not flatter me with lies about being glad to see me," she burst out angrily, "when you would rather have seen the devil."

"I won't go so far as that," said I lightly. "I don't admire the devil, and I always did admire you, though, if you wish me to be candid, I would much rather have seen you at another time."

"Perhaps after you are married," she cried, with a vicious glance.

"I did not say I wished never to see you again," I returned.

"You used not to lie even by implication in the old days," she said, showing she understood me.

"Nor you to insult me without implication," I retorted. "But I wish you would sit down. It is just as easy to be an enemy sitting as standing."

She sat down, and I thought her expression was a little less wrathful.

"Now, then, just tell me plainly why you think it worth while to come here, why you are such an enemy, and what particular injury you think and wish to do me?"

"Much more than you seem to imagine," she exclaimed sharply, her eyes flashing again.

The answer pleased me, for it seemed to show that I was successfully concealing the alarm which her visit had caused. Certainly I must not let her have an inkling of the fact that she could really do any harm.

"You are a most incomprehensible creature, my dear Clara. During the years I knew you I paid you as high a compliment as a man can pay a woman--by holding you in the highest esteem and entertaining for you the most honorable admiration. And you repay it--by this."

"You flouted and laughed at me and scorned me," she cried vehemently.

"You mean I did not make love to you. Let us be frank with one another.

Being what I was, I could not make love to you honorably; and because I held you in too high esteem to do so dishonorably will you say I scorned you?"

"Your Highness kept the fact of your n.o.ble birth very secret," she snapped, with an accent on the "highness" I did not like.

I began to fear how much she knew.

"I had the strongest reasons, but it was not done to make so clever a woman as yourself my enemy."

"Then you succeeded unwittingly. One of the prerogatives of your sudden and unexpected inheritance."

"Well, we are fighting the air--an unprofitable waste of effort. If you won't tell me, as a friend, anything about yourself, then, as an enemy, tell me in what way I can oblige you by letting you injure me?"

She laughed unpleasantly.

"So you are not altogether free from alarm that I can injure you? You are right; I can."