Her Majesty's Minister Part 38

"You offered me in exchange for my love a secret which would enable me to defeat the enemies of my country, and probably cause my advancement in the diplomatic service. You offered me the greatest temptation possible."

"No;" she said, putting up her hand, "do not use the word temptation."

"I will call it inducement, then. Well, this inducement was strong enough to persuade me to break the bond of friendship between us, and to cause me to occupy a false position. But I have hesitated, because--"

"Because you do not love me," she said quickly, interrupting me.

"No, Leonie," I protested. "Between us it is hard to define the exact line where friendship ends and love begins. Our own discretion should be able to define it. Tell me, which do you prefer--a firm friend--or a false lover?"

"You are too coldly philosophical," she answered. "I only put it to you from a common-sense standpoint."

"And which position is to be preferred?" she asked. "Your own, as that of a diplomatist with a paltry fifty thousand francs or so a year, and compelled to worry yourself over every trifling action of those who represent the Courts of your enemies; or that of my husband, with an income that would place you far above the necessity of allowing your brain to be worried by everyday trifles?"

She paused, and her lips trembled. Then with a sudden desperate pa.s.sion she went on:

"People say that I am good-looking, and my mirror tells me so; yet you, the man I love, can see in me no beauty that is attractive. To you I am simply a smart woman who is at the same time a princess--that is all."

"I am no flatterer, Leonie," I cried quickly. "But as regards personal beauty you are superb, incomparable. Remember what Vian said when he painted your portrait for the Salon--that you were the only woman he had ever painted whose features together made a perfect type of beauty."

"Ah! you remember that!" she said, smiling with momentary satisfaction.

"I thought you had forgotten it. I fear that my beauty is not what it was five years ago."

"You are the same to-day as when we first met and were introduced. It was at Longchamps. Do you remember?"

"Remember? I recollect every incident of that day," she answered. "You have been ever in my mind since."

"As a friend, I hope."

"No, as a lover."

"Impossible," I declared. "Do reason for an instant, Leonie. At this moment I am proud to count myself among your most intimate personal friends, but love between us would only result in disaster. If we married, the difference in our stations would be as irksome to you as to me; and if I did not love you, the link would only cause us both unhappiness, and, in a year or two, estrangement."

"Only if you did not love me. If you loved me it would be different."

"You would still be a princess and I a struggling diplomatist."

"It would make no difference. Our love would be the same," she answered pa.s.sionately. "Ah, Gerald, you cannot tell how very lonely my life is without a single person to care for me! I think I am the most melancholy woman in all the world. True, I have wealth, position, and good looks, the three things that the world believes necessary for the well-being of women; but I lack one--the most necessary of them all--the affection of the man I love."

"I can't help it, Leonie!" I cried. "Indeed, it is not my fault that my friendship does not overstep the bounds. Some day it may, but I tell you frankly and honestly that at present it does not. I am your friend, earnest and devoted to you--a friend such as few women have, perhaps.

Were I not actually your friend I should now, at this moment, become selfish, feign love, and thus become your bitterest enemy."

"You are cold as ice," she answered hoa.r.s.ely, in a low tone of disappointment.

Her countenance fell, as though she were utterly crushed by my straightforward declaration.

"No, you misunderstand," I replied, taking her hand tenderly in mine, and speaking very earnestly. "To-day the romance that exists within the breast of every woman is stirred within you, and causes you to utter the same words as you did at sixteen, when your first love was, in your eyes, a veritable G.o.d. You will recall those days--days when youth was golden, and when the world seemed a world of unceasing sunshine and of roses without thorns. But you, like myself, have obtained knowledge of what life really is, and have become callous to so much that used to impress and influence us in those long-past days. We have surely both of us taught ourselves to pause and to reason."

She hung her head in silence, as if she w'ere a scolded child, her looks fixed upon the ground.

"My refusal to mislead you into a belief that I love you is as painful to me as it is to you, Leonie," I went on, still holding her hand in mine. "I would do anything rather than cause you a moment's trouble and unhappiness, but I am determined that I will not play you false. These are plain, hard words, I know; but some day you will thank me for them-- you will thank me for refusing to entice you into a marriage which could only bring unhappiness to both of us."

"I shall never thank you for breaking my heart," she said in a sad voice, looking up at me. "You cannot know how I suffer, or you would never treat me thus!"

"The truth is always hardest to speak," I answered, adding, in an attempt to console her: "Let us end it all, and return to our old style of friendship."

"I cannot!" she said, shaking her head--"I cannot!" and she burst into tears.

I stood beside her in the forest-path, helpless and perplexed. Was it possible, I wondered, that the plot of the Powers against England existed only in her imagination, and that she had invented it in order to use it as a lever to gain my affections? She was a clever, resourceful woman--that I knew; but never during the course of our friendship had I found her guilty of double-dealing or of attempting to deceive me in any way whatever. More than once, when she reigned in Paris as queen of Society, she had whispered to me secrets that had been of the greatest use to us at the Emba.s.sy; and once, owing to her, we had been forearmed against a dastardly attempt on the part of an enemy to a.s.sist the Boers to defy us. A niece of the Emperor of Austria, she was received at the various Courts of Europe, and visited several of the reigning sovereigns; therefore, she was always full of such t.i.ttle-tattle as is ever busy among those who live beneath the shadow of a throne, and was far better informed as to political affairs than many of the amba.s.sadors; yet withal she was eminently cautious and discreet, and, if she wished, could be as silent as the grave. Nevertheless, although signs were many that the war-cloud had again arisen and was once more hanging heavily over Europe, I could not bring myself to believe that the plot now hatched was quite as serious as she made it out to be. The world of diplomacy in Paris is full of mares' nests, and alarms are almost of daily occurrence. When events do not conspire to create them, then those ingenious gentlemen, the Paris correspondents of the great journals, sit down and invent them. The centre of diplomatic Europe is Paris, which is also the centre of the canards, those ingeniously concocted stories which so often throw half Europe into alarm, and for which the sensational journalists alone are responsible.

"Come, Leonie," I said tenderly at last, "this is no time for tears. I regret exceedingly that this interview is so painful, but it is my duty towards you as a man and as your friend to be firm in preventing you from taking a step which after a short time you would bitterly repent."

"If you become my husband I shall never repent!" she cried. "You are the only man I have ever loved. I did not love the Prince as I love you! I know," she added, panting--"I know how unseemly it is that I, a woman, should utter these words; but my heart is full, and my pent-up feelings are now revenging themselves for their long imprisonment."

I felt myself wavering. This woman who had thrown herself into my arms, was wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, world-renowned for her beauty and high intellect--a woman altogether worthy and n.o.ble. Each moment her powers of fascination grew stronger, and I felt that, after all, I was treating her affection with slight regard, for I was now convinced that her love was no mere caprice or sudden pa.s.sion.

Yet, after all, my belief in woman's honesty and purity had been shaken by the discovery that Yolande was a spy and that Edith, after all her protestations, had a secret lover. These two facts caused me, I think, to regard the Princess with some suspicion, although at the same time I could not disguise from myself the truth that her emotion was real and her pa.s.sion genuine.

"Your confession is but the confession of an honest woman, Leonie," I said with tenderness. "But what has pa.s.sed between us must be forgotten. You tempt me to a.s.sume a position that I could not maintain.

Think for a moment. Is it right? Is it just either to yourself or to me?"

"Will you not accept the offer I made you yesterday?" she asked in the tone of one desperate, her eyes fixed upon mine in fierce earnestness.

"Will you not learn the secret and save your country from ignominy?"

I held my breath, and my eyes fixed themselves on hers. Her tear-stained face was blanched to the lips.

"No, Leonie," I answered. "Anxious as I am to save England from the net which her unscrupulous enemies have spread for her, I refuse to do so at the cost of your happiness."

"And that decision is irrevocable?" she asked, with a quick look of menace.

"It is irrevocable," I replied.

"Yes, I know," she said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper--"because another woman holds you in her toils! Well, we shall see!" and she laughed bitterly, the swift fire of jealousy flashing for an instant in the brilliant eyes that half Europe had delighted to praise. "I love you," she continued, "and some day you will love me. Meanwhile, my secret is my own."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

THE UNEXPECTED.

A fortnight pa.s.sed uneventfully. After that morning walk with the Princess I left Chantoiseau and returned to Paris. My presence at the chateau after what had pa.s.sed between us was as dangerous to her as to me. I wrote her a letter of farewell and went back to the capital that same afternoon.

In response, she had sent me a wildly worded note by a manservant, in which she declared that the reason I cast aside her love was because of the attractions of some other woman. This letter, together with the letter she had sent to my room, I kept locked in a drawer in the little den which served me as study and smoking-room. Now that they were safe under lock and key, I resolved to forget their curious and romantic history.

But the one matter uppermost in my mind was the alleged plot by the Powers against England. As I had given the Princess my word of honour not to mention it to a soul, I was unable to consult Lord Barmouth, and was compelled to wait and watch for signs that the conspiracy was in progress.

Those days were full of fevered anxiety. His Excellency was absent in the country, and the duties of the Emba.s.sy devolved upon myself. The facts that the German Amba.s.sador had travelled suddenly to Berlin to consult the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that urgent despatches were being exchanged daily between the Austrian Emba.s.sy and Vienna, seemed to me to establish the truth of Leonie's statement. I met my friends Volkouski and Korniloff, the Russian attaches, in the Grand Cafe one evening, and we spent an hour together over our consommation down at the Alcazar, in the Champs Elysees; but they apparently knew nothing, or, if they did, naturally hesitated to expose their secret. Hither and thither I sought for evidence, and with my suspicions aroused found confirmation of the Princess's story in every diplomatic action. The German Emperor made a speech in Berlin in which, with many references to his grandfather and the Fatherland, he a.s.sured Europe that never in recent history had peace been so firmly established among nations; and both from Rome and St. Petersburg came news of unusual inactivity. That calm foreboded a storm.

As those hot, anxious days went slowly past I strove to form some theory as to the manner in which the conspiracy had been arranged and as to the persons chiefly responsible, but could find none.

Had not Leonie plainly told me that this dastardly plot among jealous nations aimed directly at the undermining of the British power, the ruin of England's prestige, and the destruction of her supremacy on the sea?