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280 Queen. Who that knows what men and women are would not have shrunk from that alternative? To adopt it was to expose the Queen to all, or nearly all, the peril she had run by the loss of the letter. We indeed assumed, influenced by Rudolf's unhesitating self-confidence, that the letter would be won back, and the mouth of Rupert of Hentzau shut; but enough would remain to furnish material for eager talk and conjectures unrestrained by respect or charity. Therefore, alive as we were to its difficulties and its unending risks, we yet conceived of the thing as possible, had it in our hearts, and hinted it to one another—my wife to me, I to Bernenstein, and he to me—in quick glances and half-uttered sentences that declared its presence while shunning the open confession of it. For the Queen herself I cannot speak. Her thoughts, as I judged them, were bounded by the longing to see Mr. Rassendyll again, and dwelt on the visit that he promised as the horizon of hope. To Rudolf we had dared to disclose nothing of the part our imaginations set him to play; if he were to accept it, the acceptance would be of his own act, because the fate that old Sapt talked of drove him, and on no persuasion of ours. As he had said, he left the rest, and had centred all his efforts on the immediate task which fell to his hand to perform, the task that was to be accomplished at the dingy old