Page:Anthony Hope - Rupert of Hentzau.djvu/372

354 a sudden, swift, and fearful struggle he had suffered, and how the great temptation had wrung and tortured him before he, victorious, had set the thing behind him. I went to him and clasped his hand: this action of mine seemed to soften him.

"Sapt, Sapt," he said, "you almost made a rogue of me!"

Sapt did not respond to his gentler mood. He had been pacing angrily up and down the room. Now he stopped abruptly before Rudolf, and pointed with his finger at the Queen.

"I make a rogue of you!" he exclaimed. "And what do you make of our Queen, whom we all serve? What does this truth that you'll tell make of her? Haven't I heard how she greeted you before all Strelsau as her husband and her love? Will they believe that she didn't know her husband? Aye, you may show yourself, you may say they didn't know you. Will they believe she didn't? Was the King's ring on your finger? Where is it? And how comes Mr. Rassendyll to be at Fritz von Tarlenheim's for hours with the Queen, when the King is at his hunting-lodge? A king has died already, and two men besides, to save a word against her. And you—you’'ll be the man to set every tongue in Strelsau talking, and every finger pointing in suspicion at her!"

Rudolf made no answer. When Sapt had