Page:Anthony Hope - Rupert of Hentzau.djvu/66



N the evening of Thursday, the sixteenth of October, the Constable of Zenda was very much out of humour; he has since confessed as much. To risk the peace of a palace for the sake of a lover's greeting had never been wisdom to his mind, and he had been sorely impatient with "that fool Fritz's" yearly pilgrimage. The letter of farewell had been an added folly, pregnant with chances of disaster. Now disaster, or the danger of it, had come. The curt mysterious telegrams from Wintenberg, which told him so little, at least told him that. It ordered him—and he did not know even whose the order was—to delay Rischenheim's audience, or, if he could not, to get the King away from Zenda; why he was to act thus was not disclosed to him. But he knew as well as I that Rischenheim was completely in Rupert's hands, and he could not fail to guess that something had gone wrong at Wintenberg, and that Rischenheim came to tell the King some news that the King must not hear. His task sounded simple, but it was not so easy; for he did