So there was silence, for a space; then, she spoke to Courtney: 

“I understand.  Your Excellency refuses me your protection because I am a Valerian subject?”

Courtney bowed.

“Made so by your own statements,” he answered.

“And Your Majesty refuses to interfere between the Governor of Dornlitz and me, because, as his wife, I am subject to his authority?”

“In effect, yes,” said Frederick.

“And you, my Lord Armand, declare that I am not your wife and, therefore, that I am an American subject?”

“I think, Mrs. Spencer, we have gone over that matter ad nauseam,” I said.

“I grant you the nauseousness,” she retorted.

“A bare-faced lie may not be over chary as to the defence it provokes,” I answered.

She gathered up her skirts, and turned toward the door.

“What a pretty sight you three are,” she sneered.  “A King, an Ambassador and a Royal Archduke playing with one poor woman like cats with a mouse.  Truly, sirs, you should have lived three hundred years ago.  You would have shown rare skill in the torture chambers of the Holy Inquisition.”

“’Pon my soul, madame!” Frederick exclaimed, “I’m glad to hear a frank opinion of myself.  It’s a privilege that rarely comes to a King.”

“More’s the pity for the King,” she replied.  “And more’s the shame for his selfish advisers,” and she looked at Courtney, and, then, at me.

“Have I Your Majesty’s permission to depart—­to my hotel?” she ended.

The King nodded, without replying.

She swept him another of those wonderful curtsies; then turned to
Moore, who swung back the door for her.

At the threshold she looked back and smiled at me.

“Au revoir, Armand, dear, au revoir,” she said almost caressingly; “you will come back to me soon, I know.”

Before I could frame an answer she was gone.

XIX

MY COUSIN, THE DUKE

For the next few weeks, matters went along without any particular incident.  The snarl, in which I was entangled, showed no signs of unravelling, and my marriage to the Princess and the Royal succession seemed farther away than ever.

The investigations, in the United States, had yielded nothing of any utility.  Indeed, they had been practically barren, for they had told me little more than Courtney’s cablegram.

Edwards, the witness named in the certificate, had not been located, though New York had been scraped as with a fine-tooth comb; so, it was safe to assume his existence was only on paper and in Alderman McGuire’s brain.

The movements of Madeline Spencer had been very difficult to trace, as was entirely natural—­for what hotel servant would remember, weeks after, the doings of a woman guest, whose life had been at all regular.  All that could be ascertained, definitely, was that she had sailed from New York ten days prior to her arrival at Dornlitz; and that she had registered as Mrs. Armand Dalberg at the Waldorf a week before sailing; her luggage having been checked there from Philadelphia.  The floor-clerk and some of the pages recalled her very readily, and were rather positive that they had not seen any foreigner with her, who resembled a Valerian.