By Wit of Woman, Arthur W. Marchmont [best books to read in your 20s .TXT] 📗

part; and so far successful that I won the Countess' confidence and she has pressed me to go to her."

"You didn't refer her to me for your credentials, I suppose?" he said, his eyes lighting with sly enjoyment.

"She asked for no credentials."

"Do you mean that you talked her into wanting you so badly as to take you into her house without knowing anything about you?"

"May I remind your Excellency that I was honoured by even your confidence in giving me my present position without any credentials."

He threw up his hands.

"You have made me forget that in the excellent discretion with which you have since justified my confidence. I have indeed done you less than justice."

"The Countess thinks that, together, we should make a strong combination."

"You must not go to her, Miss Gilmore—unless at least——"

He paused, but I had no difficulty in completing his sentence.

"That is my view, also—unless at least I come to an understanding with you beforehand. It will help that understanding if I tell you that I am in no way dependent upon my work for my living. I am an American, as I have told you, but not a poor one; and my motive in all this has no sort of connexion with money. As money is reckoned here, I am already a sufficiently rich woman."

"You continue to surprise me. Yet you spoke of—of a recompense for your services?"

"I am a volunteer—for the present. I shall no doubt seek a return some time; but as yet, it will be enough for me to work for your Government; to go my own way, to use my own methods, and to rely only upon you where I may need the machinery at your disposal. My success shall be my own. If I succeed, the benefits will be yours; if I fail, you will be at liberty to disavow all connexion between us."

He sat thinking over these unusual terms so long that I had to dig in the spur.

"The Countess d'Artelle is a more dangerous woman than you seem at present to appreciate. She is the secret agent of her Government. She has not told me that, or I should not tell it to you; but I know it. Should I serve your Government or hers? The choice is open to me."

He drew a deep breath.

"I have half suspected it," he murmured; then bluntly: "You must not serve hers."

"That is the decision I was sure you would make, General. We will take it as final."

"You are a very remarkable young woman, Miss Gilmore."

"And now, a somewhat fatigued one. I will bid you good-night. I am no longer your daughter's governess, but will remain until you have found my successor."

"You will always be a welcome guest in my house," and he bade me good-night with such new consideration as showed me I had impressed him quite as deeply as I could have wished. Perhaps rather too deeply, I thought afterwards, when I recalled his glances as we parted.

CHAPTER III MY PLAN OF CAMPAIGN

When my talk with General von Erlanger over the chess board took place, I had but recently decided to plunge into the maelstrom whose gloomy undercurrent depths concealed the proofs of my father's innocence and the dark secret of his cruel wrongs.

My motive in coming to Pesth was rather a desire to gauge for myself at first hand the possibility of success, should I undertake the task, than the definitely formed intention to attempt it.

I had studied all my father's papers closely, and in the light of them had pushed such inquiries as I could. I had at first taken a small house, and as a reason for my residence in the city had entered as a student of the university.

I was soon familiar with the surface position of matters. Duke Alexinatz was dead: his son's death was said to have broken his heart; and Duke Ladislas of Kremnitz was the acknowledged head of the Slavs. Major Katona was now Colonel Katona, and lived a life of seclusion in a house in a suburb of the city. Colonel von Erlanger had risen to be General, and was one of the chief Executive Ministers of the local Hungarian Government—a very great personage indeed.

The Duke had two sons, Karl the elder, his heir, and Gustav. Karl was a disappointment; and gossip was very free with his name as that of a morose, dissipated libertine, whose notorious excesses had culminated in an attachment for Madame d'Artelle, a very beautiful Frenchwoman who had come recently to the city.

Of Gustav, the younger, no one could speak too highly. He was all that his brother was not. As clever as he was handsome and as good as he was clever, "Gustav of the laughing eyes," as he was called, was a favourite with every one, men and women alike, from his father downwards. He was such a paragon, indeed, that the very praises of him started a prejudice in my mind against him.

I did not believe in paragons—men paragons, that is. Cynicism this, if you like, unworthy of a girl of three and twenty; but the result of a bitter experience which I had better relate here, as it will account for many things, and had close bearing upon what was to follow.

As I told General von Erlanger, I am not a "usual person;" and the cause is to be looked for, partly in my natural disposition and partly in my upbringing.

My uncle Gilmore was a man who had made his own "pile," and had "raised" me, as they say in the South, pretty much as he would have "raised" a boy had I been of that sex. His wife died almost directly after I was taken to Jefferson City; but not before my sharp young eyes had seen that the two were on the worst of terms. His nature was that rare combination of dogged will and kind heart; and his wife perpetually crossed him in small matters and was a veritable shrew of shrews. He was "taking no more risks with females," he told me often enough, with special reference to matrimony; and at first was almost disposed to send me back to Pesth because of my sex. That inclination soon changed, however; and all the love that was in his big heart was devoted to my small self.

But he treated me much more like a boy than a girl. I had my own way in everything; nothing was too good for me. In a word, I was spoiled to a degree which only American parents understand.

"Old Gilmore's heiress" was somebody in Jefferson City, I can assure you; and if I gave myself ridiculous airs in consequence, the fault was not wholly my own. I am afraid I had a very high opinion of myself. I did what I liked, had what I wished, went where I pleased, and thought myself a great deal prettier than I was. I was in short "riding for a fall;" and I got it—and fell far; being badly hurt in the process.

The trouble came in New York where I went when I was eighteen; setting out with the elated conviction that I was going to make a sort of triumphal social progress over the bodies of many discomfited and outclassed rivals.

But I found that in New York I was just one among many girls, most of them richer and much prettier than I: a nobody with provincial mannerisms among heaps of somebodies with an air and manner which I at first despised, then envied, and soon set to work at ninety miles an hour speed to imitate.

I had all but completed this self-education when my trouble came—a love trouble, of course. I became conscious of a great change in myself. Up to that point I had held a pretty cheap opinion of men in general, and especially of those with whom I had flirted. But I realized, all suddenly, the wrongfulness of flirting. That was, I think the first coherent symptom. The next was the painful doubt whether a very handsome Austrian, the Count von Ostelen, was merely flirting with me.

I knew German thoroughly, having spoken it in my childhood; and I had ample opportunities of speaking it now with the Count. We both made the most of them, indeed; until I found—I was only eighteen, remember—that the world was all brightness and sunshine; the people all good and true; and the Count the embodiment of all that a girl's hero should be.

I was warned against the Count, of course: one's intimate friends always see to that; but the warnings acted as intelligent persons will readily understand—they made me his champion, and plunged me deeper than ever into love's wild, entrancing, ecstatic maze. To me he became not only the personification of manly beauty and strength, but the very type of human nobility, honour, and virtue.

To think such rubbish about any man, one must of course have the fever very badly; and I had it so intensely that, when he paid me attentions which made other girls tremble with anger and envy, I was so happy that I even forgot to exult over them. I must have been very love sick for that.

I came to laugh at it afterwards—or almost laugh—and to realize that it was an excellent discipline for my silly child's pride: but to learn the lesson I had to pass through the ordeal of fire and passion and hot scalding tears that go to the hardening of a young heart.

He had been merely amusing himself at the expense of a "raw miss from the West;" and the knowledge came to me as suddenly as the squall will strike a yacht, all sails standing, and strew the proud white canvas a wreck on the waves.

At a ball one night we had danced together as often as usual, and when, as we sat out a waltz, he had asked me for a ribbon or a flower, I had been child enough to let him see all my heart as I gave them to him. Love was in my eyes; and was answered by words and looks from him which set me in a very seventh heaven of ecstatic delight.

Then, the next day, crash came the dream-skies all about me.

I was riding in the Central Park and he joined me. I saw at once he was changed; and my glad smile died away at his constrained formal greeting. He struck the blow at once, with scarcely a word of preamble.

"I am leaving for Europe to-morrow, Miss von Dreschler," he said. "I have enjoyed New York immensely."

The chill of dismay was too deadly to be concealed. I gripped the pommel of the saddle with twitching, strenuous fingers.

"You have been called away suddenly?" I asked; my instinct being thus to defend him even against himself.

He paused, as if hesitating to use the excuse I offered.

"No," he answered. "It has been arranged for weeks. These things have to be with us, you know."

In a flash his baseness was laid bare to me; and the first sensation of numbing pain dumbed me. I had not then acquired the art of masking my feelings. But anger came to my relief, as I realized how he had intentionally played with me. I knew what a silly trusting fool I had been; and knew too that had I been a man, I would have struck him first and killed him afterwards for his dastardly treachery. I was like a little wild beast in my sudden fury.

He saw something of this; for his eyes changed. "I am so sorry," he said. As if a lip apology were sufficient anæsthetic for the stabbing pain in my heart.

"For what, Count von Ostelen?" I asked, lifting my head and looking him squarely in the eyes. The question disconcerted him.

"I did not know——" he stammered, and stopped in confusion.

"Did not know what?" I asked; and he was again so embarrassed by the direct challenge that