Page:Stevenson - Prince Otto. A Romance.djvu/166

 ‘I see it, but this is sudden. It is a public crime,’ she said, nodding at him with a sort of horror.

‘Look but a little deeper,’ he returned, ‘and whose is the crime?’

‘His!’ she cried. ‘His, before God! And I hold him liable. But still’

‘It is not as if he would be harmed,’ submitted Gondremark.

‘I know it,’ she replied, but it was still unheartily.

And then, as brave men are entitled, by prescriptive right as old as the world’s history, to the alliance and the active help of Fortune, the punctual goddess stepped down from the machine. One of the Princess’s ladies begged to enter; a man, it appeared, had brought a line for the Freiherr von Gondremark. It proved to be a pencil billet, which the crafty Greisengesang had found the means to scribble and despatch under the very guns of Otto; and the daring of the act bore testimony to the terror of the actor. For Greisengesang had but one influential motive: fear. The note ran thus: ‘At the first council, procuration to be withdrawn.—Corn. Greis.’

So, after three years of exercise, the right of signature was to be stript from Seraphina. It was more than an insult; it was a public disgrace; and she did not pause to consider how