"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would have been stopped by your husband himself. As it is you are simply going where you are expected to go--to Westboro' Castle."
This dénouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no place for ecstatics. She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated, dazed:--
"The _King_! The King had followed me! He had been warned then, but by whom? You above all did not....?"
"Oh no!" He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this disloyalty. "I had nothing to do with it. The King had come on with the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's."
And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven."
She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you play with me?" The tears started to her eyes.
"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession--"has plainly betrayed you. Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your husband--at all events, both he and the King took the slow train."
"But _you_," she interrupted, staring at him--"You are not Lord Gresthaven?"
"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'. I tried over and over again to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the rôle you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to Westboro' Castle. My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from Boston, in the United States." Bulstrode thus tardily introduced himself.
And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of princes, was nevertheless taken aback. Not that he had any preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do--when she eventually knew. He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and his climax. He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn, but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared.