Her Majesty's Minister Part 35

"He has told me nothing," she answered. "But I am, nevertheless, aware of all that has come to pa.s.s. I know, too, that since my absence at Rudolstadt you have fallen in love."

"Well?" I inquired.

She shrugged her well-formed shoulders as if to indicate that such a thing was beyond her comprehension.

"Is it a disaster, do you think?" I asked.

"You yourself should know that," she replied in a strained tone. "It seems, however, that you do not exercise your usual discretion in your love-affairs."

"What do you mean, Leonie?" I demanded quickly, halting and looking at her. Who, I wondered, had told her the truth? To which of my loves did she refer--the spy or the traitress?

"I mean exactly what I have said," she answered quite calmly. "If you had confided in me I might perhaps have used my influence in preventing the inevitable."

"The inevitable!" I echoed. "What is that?"

"A combination of the Powers against England," she replied quickly. "As you know well enough, Gerald, I have facilities for learning much that is hidden from even your accredited representatives. Therefore, I tell you this, that at this moment there is a plan arranged to upset British diplomacy in all four capitals and to ruin British prestige. It is a bold plan, and I alone outside the conspirators am aware of it. If carried out, England must either declare war or lose her place as the first nation in the world. Recollect these words of mine, for I am not joking at this moment. To-day is the blackest that Europe has ever known."

She had halted in the path, and spoke with an earnestness that held me bewildered.

"A conspiracy against us!" I gasped. "What is it? Tell me of it?"

"No," she answered. "At present I cannot. Suffice it for you to know that I alone am aware of the truth, and that I alone, if I so desire, can thwart their plans and turn their own weapons against them."

"You can?" I cried. "You will do it! Tell me the truth--for my sake.

I have been foolish, I know, Leonie; but tell me. If it is really serious, no time must be lost."

"Serious?" she echoed. "It is so serious that I doubt whether the present month will pa.s.s before war is declared."

"By England?"

"Yes. Your country will be forced into a conflict which must prove disastrous. The plan is the most clever and most dastardly ever conceived by your enemies, and this time no diplomatic efforts will succeed in staving off the tragedy, depend upon it."

"Are both Wolkenstein and de Hindenburg aware of the plot?"

"I presume so. I have watched carefully, but have, however, discovered nothing to lead me to believe that they understand how near Europe is to an armed conflict."

"Then your information is not from Wolkenstein?"

"No, from a higher source."

"From your Emperor?"

She nodded.

"Then this accounts for your sudden reappearance among us?" I said.

"You may put my presence down to that, if you wish," she replied. "But promise me, on your word of honour, that you will not breathe a single word to a soul--not even to Lord Barmouth."

"If you impose silence upon me, Leonie, it shall be as you wish. But you have just said that you can a.s.sist me. How?"

"I can do so--if I choose," she responded thoughtfully, drawing the profile of a man's face in the dust with the ferrule of her walking-stick.

"You speak strangely," I said--"almost as though you do not intend to do me this service. Surely you will not withhold from me intelligence which might enable me to rescue my country from the machination of its enemies?"

"And why, pray, should I betray my own country in order to save yours?"

she asked in a cold tone.

I was nonplussed. For a moment I could not reply. At last, however, I answered in a low, earnest tone:

"Because we are friends, Leonie."

"Mere friendship does not warrant one turning traitor," she replied.

"But Austria is not the prime mover of this conspiracy," I said. "The rulers of another nation have formed the plot. Tell me which of the Powers is responsible?"

"No," she answered with a slight hauteur. "As you have thought fit to preserve certain secrets from me, I shall keep this knowledge to myself."

"What secrets have I withheld from you?" I inquired, dismayed.

"Secrets concerning your private affairs."

I knew well that she referred to my pa.s.sion for Yolande. For a moment I hesitated, until words rose to my lips and I answered:

"Surely my private affairs are of little interest to you! Why should I trouble you with them?"

"Because we are friends, are we not?" she said, looking straight into my face with those fine eyes which half Europe had admired when le pied de la Princesse had been the catchword of Paris.

"Most certainly, Leonie," I agreed. "And I hope that our friendship will last always."

"It cannot if you refuse to confide in me and sometimes to seek my advice."

"But you, in your position, going hither and thither, with hosts of friends around you, can feel no real interest in my doings?" I protested.

"Friends!" she echoed in a voice of sarcasm. "Do you call these people friends? My guests at this moment are not friends. Because of my position--because I am popular, and it is considered chic to stay at Chantoiseau--because I have money, and am able to amuse them, they come to me, the men to bow over my hand, and the women to call me their `dear Princess.' Bah! they are not friends. The diplomatic set come because it is a pleasant mode of pa.s.sing a few weeks of summer, while still within hail of Paris; and the others--well, they are merely the entourage which every fashionable woman unconsciously gathers about her."

"Then among them all you have no friend?" Again she turned her fine eyes upon me, and in a low but distinct tone declared:

"Only yourself, Gerald."

"I hope, Leonie, that I shall always prove myself worthy of your friendship," I answered, impressed by her sudden seriousness.

Her face had grown pale, and she had uttered those words with all possible earnestness.

Then we walked on together in the silence of the darkening gloom of the forest. The ruddy light of the dying day struggled through the foliage, the birds had ceased their song, and the stillness of night had already fallen. We were each full of our own thoughts, and neither uttered a word.

Suddenly she halted again, and, gripping my arm, looked up into my face.

I started, for upon her pale countenance I saw a look of desperation such as I had never before seen there.