“Is this wise?” he asked a little desperately.

She ignored his words.

“I was taken back into favour at Court,” she went on.  “For that I owe to you my thanks.  Wilhelm was much impressed by your recent visit to him, and by the way in which you have established yourself here.  He spoke also with warm commendation of your labours in Africa, which he seemed to appreciate all the more as you were sent there an exile.  He asked me, Leopold,” she added, dropping her voice a little, “if my feelings towards you remained unchanged.”

Dominey’s face remained unrelaxed.  Persistently he refused the challenge of her eyes.

“I told him the truth,” she proceeded.  “I told him how it all began, and how it must last with me—­to the end.  We spoke even of the duel.  I told him what both your seconds had explained to me,—­that turn of the wrist, Conrad’s wild lunge, how he literally threw himself upon the point of your sword.  Wilhelm understands and forgives, and he has sent you this letter.”

She drew a small grey envelope from her pocket.  On the seal were the Imperial Hohenzollern arms.  She passed it to him.

“Leopold,” she whispered, “please read that.”

He shook his head, although he accepted the letter with reluctant fingers.

“Read the superscription,” she directed.

He obeyed her.  It was addressed in a strange, straggling handwriting to Sir Everard Dominey, Baronet.  He broke the seal unwillingly and drew out the letter.  It was dated barely a fortnight back.  There was neither beginning or ending; just a couple of sentences scrawled across the thick notepaper: 

“It is my will that you offer your hand in marriage to the Princess Stephanie of Eiderstrom.  Your union shall be blessed by the Church and approved by my Court.

“Wilhelm.”

Dominey sat as a man enthralled with silence.  She watched him.

“Not on your knees yet?” she asked, with faint but somewhat resentful irony.  “Can it be, Leopold, that you have lost your love for me?  You have changed so much and in so many ways.  Has the love gone?”

Even to himself his voice sounded harsh and unnatural, his words instinct with the graceless cruelty of a clown.

“This is not practical,” he declared.  “Think!  I am as I have been addressed here, and as I must remain yet for months to come—­Everard Dominey, an Englishman and the owner of this house—­the husband of Lady Dominey.”

“Where is your reputed wife?” Stephanie demanded, frowning.

“In the nursing home where she has been for the last few months,” he replied.  “She has already practically recovered.  She cannot remain there much longer.”

“You must insist upon it that she does.”

“I ask you to consider the suspicions which would be excited by such a course,” Dominey pleaded earnestly, “and further, can you explain to me in what way I, having already, according to belief of everybody, another wife living, can take advantage of this mandate?”