The old lady glanced up at her for a few moments without speaking, there was a slightly puzzled look in her kind blue eyes; then, in a second, this look was gone, and one of deep solicitude and affection took its place.
It was as if some expression or pa.s.sing glance on my dear wife"s face had touched a chord somewhere in her nature, perhaps long forgotten.
She put out her slender white hand and drew Dolores down beside her on to the bench on which she sat; then she put her arm round her and pressed her to her, as one fondles a child.
"My dear," she said, "between a husband and his wife there should be no secret. No secret of mine shall divide you two. What I tell to one, I tell to both. What does it matter? For myself, I shall soon be gone; for the others, what harm can it bring them?"
We sat in silence, she with her arm round Dolores, her eyes fixed on the blue lake, a tear trembling in each, and she spoke to us as one whose thoughts were far away among the people and the scenes she described. I sat enthralled by every word she uttered.
"My eyes first saw the light," she began, "in a castle among the mountains around Valoro, one of the seats of my father, the king!"
Though I started at her words, they did not amaze me; I was prepared for them.
"My mother died when I was ten," she continued. "How I remember her with her fair curls and blue eyes, they seemed so strange among the dark-skinned Aquazilians! Young though I was, the shock of her death was the most awful, I think, that I ever had, perhaps--save one. It was all the greater because I had no brother or sister to share my grief with me. Yet I loved my father very dearly; he was a good and great man, and much reverenced by his people. There was no talk of revolutions nor republics in those days; the people were content under a mild rule.
"The years went on, and I became a woman, nurtured in the magnificence of a rich palace, yet imbued with the fear of G.o.d, for my father was a good man, and had me well taught my faith. I grew up, I think, with the brightness of my dead mother"s spirit pervading me, for I avoided many of the pitfalls of youth.
"My royal father, often taking my face between his hands, would look into my eyes, and thank G.o.d that I had not in me the wickedness of the Dolphbergs, the race from which we sprang. It was when I was three-and-twenty that a sudden chill, caught by my father when out hunting, produced a fever which robbed me of him, and I was left an orphan; an orphan queen to reign over a nation.
"I was my father"s only child; there was no Salic law to bar me. But as the orphan is ever succoured by heaven, so was I in my lonely royal state upheld by the counsels of a good and great man.
"Your grandfather, my child," she continued turning to Dolores, "the old Don Silvio d"Alta.
"He had been my father"s stay in all his troubles; the d"Altas were a race of diplomatists, and when death claimed him your father, Don Juan, took his place."
A soft look came into her eyes as she sat with Dolores" hand in hers, a far-away look; her thoughts were in the times she spoke of.
"Those were happy days, Dolores," she continued, "those first years when your father and I ruled the people of Aquazilia. I had had a reign of ten years when your grandfather died and young Don Juan took the reins of government as my adviser; no one ever thought of contesting his right to it. Was he not a d"Alta?
"He was but twenty-five and I barely nine years older when he became my chancellor, and those ten years of ruling should have taught me prudence as a queen had I but listened to Don Juan"s counsels too. For I know he loved me, loved me far too well perhaps and above my deserts.
"Had I had the prudence of an honest milkmaid who guards her honour as by instinct, I might have reigned this day at Valoro, instead of being the victim of a villain who, creeping into my heart like the serpent into Eden, destroyed it with the fire of burning love, and left me only ashes."
"It was in the very first year of Don Juan"s chancellorship that there came to Valoro the son of a Grand Duke of one of the German States; what brought him there I shall never know. He told me it was the sight of my face in a picture, and the "glamour of my virgin court," but I think rather it was the spirit of the adventurer, or the gamester, which seeks for gain and counts not the cost to others. The Prince of Rittersheim----"
"Rittersheim!" I exclaimed, interrupting her.
"Yes," she continued, "Adalbert, the eldest son of the Grand Duke of Rittersheim, he who succeeded his father two years later.
"The Prince was, I think, the handsomest man I have ever seen, and I think the wickedest. His tall fine presence, set off by a magnificent uniform, was seen at every Court I held. At every Court ball he claimed my hand for the first dance; as far as my lonely state allowed he sought me at every opportunity, and I, like a fool, was flattered by his attentions.
"Yes, to my sorrow, I began to love him.
"I had travelled but little; travelling was harder in those days; one tour in Europe with my father, that was all.
"I had fondly imagined that my suitor was a free, unmarried man. The first shock of his perfidy came when I learned he was not; but it came too late--I loved him.
"Don Juan told me, as he was bound in duty and honour to tell me from his position, that the Prince of Rittersheim was already married, but was separated from his wife.
"At the very next opportunity I had of speaking to the Prince--it was in a secluded part of the palace gardens, and the meetings were connived at by one of my ladies, the Baroness of Altenstein--I asked him plainly if he were married.
"This was apparently the opportunity he had been waiting for; he threw himself at my feet, and in pa.s.sionate terms declared his love for me.
"He had loved me from the first moment that he had seen my portrait, he had loved me ten times more since he had seen the original.
"I stayed the torrent of his words and reminded him that he was married.
"Yes, he admitted he was married in name, but his marriage was no marriage; he had separated from his wife by the direction of the Grand Duke, his father--in this he spoke the truth, but the reason was far different--his so-called marriage was soon to be set aside as null and void, he told me.
""Then come back to me when you are free," I answered, "and I will listen to you if the Church permits," for I knew he was not of my Faith, and the German States treated marriage lightly. My answer only caused him to redouble his entreaties; he begged me not to drive him from me, he could not live away from my presence, and I, poor fool, looking down at his handsome face and graceful person, and loving him with my whole heart, believed him.
"I know not how it came about, but I found myself sitting on a seat in that secluded corner of my garden with the Prince beside me with his arms around me, whilst my lady-in-waiting, the Baroness d"Altenstein, had discreetly wandered off out of earshot, but still with a keen eye that no one should disturb us.
"I never can account for it, I never can understand how it was I listened to him. I suppose it was the hot bad blood of the Dolphbergs which lurked in my veins and urged me, for I loved with all the pa.s.sion of my race then; loved as a woman over thirty loves who has never loved before.
"Sitting on that rustic seat with him, whilst the cool evening wind played about us, I listened to a scheme he unfolded to me. He said he loved me to such distraction that he could not leave me, it would kill him; he could not wait until his marriage was set aside. He swore that he believed himself conscience free to marry, and swore a great oath that nothing should ever part him from me.
"In soft, loving whispers, he proposed that we should be married secretly; he had a priest all ready willing to perform the ceremony.
"Then he would be sure of me and could live content.
"In a few months his former alliance would be set aside; before all the world we could be married again. A grand state ceremony if I would have it so.
"I listened to him, and my heart beat high as he spoke, yet I doubted in my saner moments whether I should ever be permitted to marry him by my ministers and my people were he free that very day.
"Poor fool that I was, he bent me to his will within a week, and he had no greater advocate for his cause than the Baroness d"Altenstein, my lady, though, poor soul, she only meant me well. But she was romantic, and had not long been married to a man she loved, a courtier from the country of the Dolphbergs; she had spent her honeymoon in their capital, and was an advocate for love at any price.
"Knowing I loved the Prince of Rittersheim, she worked only to make me happy by a marriage with him.
"With her knowledge only, I slipped away from Court for a week and went through a ceremony of marriage with the Prince at a little village church hidden away in the mountains a hundred miles from Valoro.
"I married him in the dress and under the name of a simple peasant woman, not knowing--as he did--that such a ceremony was utterly null and void.
"Was I happy? I think he loved me then--a little." A soft, sad look overspread the sweet old face; she gazed away across the lake in silence for a few moments. It seemed that, even after all these years, that time of love and falseness held some tender recollection still.
She came, as it were, to herself almost directly, and heaving a great sigh, went on--
"Long before the week was ended, the Prince had told me I must return to the Court, and take my place there as before.
"Of course I protested, and begged him to even then make our marriage public; that I would give up the throne. Had I not a great fortune left me by my father?
"Yes, that was the point that touched him, the great fortune. The treasures of my late father were immense. Besides an enormous fortune in money, mostly invested prudently in Europe, he possessed some of the most valuable diamonds in the world. It had been his diversion to collect them; he believed that they were always a most valuable security, likely to increase in value, and therefore he did not grudge the money sunk in them. The most valuable, reckoned to be worth a million English pounds, were stored in a safe of special construction made of steel. They were apart from the Crown Jewels, and were never worn. Indeed most of them were unset. My father"s theory was that they were of immense value and could be carried in a small compa.s.s in case of necessity.
"The Prince, of course, knew from me full well of these treasures, and I firmly believe hungered for their possession from the very moment he learned from my foolish lips of their existence. He forced me at the end of the few days" honeymoon to return to the Court, and then from that time forth I saw him only surrept.i.tiously with the aid of d"Altenstein, who was the aider and abettor of it all, yet loving me, and working only, as she thought, poor soul, for my happiness.
"I was soon undeceived in my Prince. I soon learned that he was in sore straits for money, and that he intended to get it from me.