“I was wrong, but I am willing to pay the penalty.  My love for Lorenz was greater than my discretion.  That is my only excuse, but it is one you should not accept,” said Mizrox, as coolly as if announcing the time of day.  Lorry looked first at him and then at the Princess, bewildered and uncertain.

“I have no ill will against you, my Lord Duke.  Release him from his bond your Highness.”

“Gladly, since you refuse to hold him to his oath,” she said.

“I am under an eternal obligation to you, sir, for your leniency, and I shall ever revere the Princess who pardons so graciously the gravest error.”

Yetive begged Bolaroz to continue to make the Court his home while in Graustark, and the old Prince responded with the declaration that he would remain long enough to sign and approve the new covenant, at least.  Before stepping from the throne, Yetive called in low tones to Lorry, a pretty flush mantling her cheek: 

“Will you come to me in half an hour?”

“For my reward?” he asked, eagerly.

“Ach?” she cried, softly, reprovingly.  Count Halfont’s face took on a troubled expression as he caught the swift communication in their eyes.  After all, she was a Princess.

She passed from the room beside Halfont, proud and happy in the victory over despair, glorying in the exposure of her heart to the world, her blood tingling and dancing with the joys of anticipation.  Lorry and Anguish, the wonder and admiration of all, were given a short but convincing levee in the hallway.  Lords and ladies praised and lauded them, overwhelming them with the homage that comes to the brave.  But Gaspon uttered one wish that struck Lorry’s warm, leaping heart like a piece of ice.

“Would to God that you were a Prince of the realm,” said the minister of finance, a look of regret and longing in his eyes.  That wish of Gaspon’s sent Lorry away with the sharp steel of desolation, torturing intensely as it drove deeper and deeper the reawakened pangs of uncertainty.  There still remained the fatal distance between him and the object of his heart’s desire.

He accompanied Captain Quinnox to his quarters, where he made himself presentable before starting for the enchanted apartment in the far end of the castle.  Eager, burning passion throbbed side by side with the cold pulsing of fear, a trembling race between two unconquerable emotions.  Passion longed for the voice, the eyes, the caresses; fear cried aloud in every troubled throb:  “You will see her and kiss her and then you will be banished.”

The two emotions thus thrown together, clashing fiercely for supremacy, at last wove themselves into a single, solid, uncompromising whole.  Out of the two grew an aggressive determination not to be thwarted.  Love and fear combined to give him strength; from his eyes fled the hopeless look, from his brain the doubt, from his blood the chill.