She met him with a smile, and let him kiss her cheek.
“I am sorry about last night, dear,” she said, “but I was quite too wretched to see even you—and I wanted to see you.”
He sat on the arm of the chair, playing softly with her hair.
“I wish I could believe that it was just I you wanted,” he said.
She shot him an upward glance of her siren eyes.
“I have been thinking about this business that we have on hand,” she continued; “and, Ferdinand, if you wish my aid, you must get busy—I can’t endure this stagnation longer. I’m a wild beast that would die in confinement; I need the jungle and the air and sky.”
“Your jungle, little one, is the Champs Élysées and cher Maxim’s; la chaleur communicative du banquet;—your air and sky, the adulation of the masculine and the stare of admiring eyes.”
“Yes, it is; and I’ve been away a long, long time; yet I want to stay with you until this work is ended—because” (taking his hand and smiling up at him) “you have been good to me, and because it promises excitement of a novel sort—only, dear, do let us be at it.”
A door swung back. “Madam is served!” came the monotone.
As they went in, the Duke slipped his arm around her slender waist.
“We’re going to be at it,” he said; “send the servants away and I’ll tell you my plan; it was for that I came last evening.”
“Now, tell me!” she exclaimed, as the door closed behind the footman.
“We are going back to Lotzenia,” he said.
She paused, and the black eye-brows went up.
He nodded. “That is where the game will be played out.”
She made to shiver. “So, for me, it’s only out of a charming mausoleum into a common grave.”
He laughed. “It will be a rarely lively grave, my dear Madeline, and, I promise you, exciting enough for even your starved nerves.”
“Soon, I trust—there is work to be done here first.”
“The very simplest I could devise,” said he; “to lure the American to Lotzenia and——”
She smiled comprehendingly. “Why take all that trouble—why not kill him in Dornlitz?”
He flung up a cautioning hand. “Softly, my dear, softly—and not so blunt in the words—and as I said, it’s easier there and surer.”
“But it would be so much prettier to play the game out here,” she half objected; “and more accordant with your taste, I fancy.”