“I have had a visit from Hedwig. Rather a stormy one, poor child.” He turned and fixed on his Chancellor his faded eyes. “In this course that you have laid out, and that I am following, as I always have,” irony this, but some truth, too,--“have you no misgivings? You still think it is the best thing?”
“But all this haste,” put in the King querulously.
“Is that so necessary? Hedwig begs for time. She hardly knows the man.”
“Time! But I thought--” He hesitated. 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.
“I should judge,” the King went on relentlessly, “that this vaunted affection of his for the boy is largely assumed, a cover for other matters. But,” he added, with a flicker of humor, “my granddaughter assures me that it is she who has made the advances. I believe she asked him to elope with her, and he refused!”
“A boy-and-girl affair, sire. He is loyal. And in all of this, you and I are reckoning without Karl. The Princess hardly knows him, and naturally she is terrified. But his approaching visit will make many changes. He is a fine figure of a man, and women--”
“Exactly;” said the King dryly. What the Chancellor meant was that women always had loved Karl, and the King understood.
“His wild days are over,” bluntly observed the Chancellor. “He is forty, sire.”
“Aye,” said the King. “And at forty, a bad man changes his nature, and purifies himself in marriage! Nonsense, Karl will be as he has always been. But we have gone into this before. Only, I am sorry for Hedwig. Hilda would have stood it better. She is like her father. However”--his voice hardened “the thing is arranged, and we must carry out our contract. Get rid of this young Larisch.”
The Chancellor sat reflecting, his chin dropped forward on his breast. “Otto will miss him.”
“Well, out with it. I may not dismiss him. What, then?”
“It is always easy to send men away. But it is sometimes better to retain them, and force them to your will. We have here an arrangement that is satisfactory. Larisch is keen, young, and loyal. Hedwig has thrown herself at him. For that, sire, she is responsible, not he.”