rward it, if he could!

CHAPTER VIII. THE LETTER

The Countess Loschek was alone. Alone and storming. She had sent her
maid away with a sharp word, and now she was pacing the floor.

Hedwig, of all people!

She hated her. She had always hated her. For her youth, first; later,
when she saw how things were going, for the accident that had made her a
granddaughter to the King.

And Karl.

Even this last June, when Karl had made his looked-for visit to the
summer palace where the Court had been in, residence, he had already had
the thing in mind. Even when his arms had been about her, Olga Loschek,
he had been looking over her shoulder, as it were, at Hedwig. He had had
it all in his wicked head, even then. For Karl was wicked. None would
know it better than she, who was risking everything, life itself, for
him. Wicked; ungrateful, and unscrupulous. She loathed him while she
loved him.

The thing would happen. This was the way things were done in Courts.
An intimation from one side that a certain thing would be agreeable
and profitable. A discussion behind closed doors. A reply that the
intimation had been well received. Then the formal proposal, and its
acceptance.

Hedwig would marry Karl. She might be troublesome, would indeed almost
certainly be troublesome. Strangely enough, the Countess hated her the
more for that. To value so lightly the thing for which Olga Loschek
would have given her soul, this in itself was hateful. But there was
more. The Countess saw much with her curiously wide, almost childishly
bland eyes; it was only now that it occurred to her to turn what she
knew of Hedwig and Nikky to account.

She stopped pacing the floor, and sat down. Suppose Hedwig and Nikky
Larisch went away together? Hedwig, she felt, would have the courage
even for that. That would stop things. But Hedwig did not trust her. And
there was about Nikky a dog-like quality of devotion, which warned her
that, the deeper his love for Hedwig, the more unlikely he would be to
bring her to disgrace. Nikky might be difficult.

"The fool!" said the Countess, between her clenched teeth. To both the
Archduchess Annunciata and her henchwoman, people were chiefly divided
into three classes, fools, knaves, and themselves.

She must try for Hedwig's confidence, then. But Karl! How to reach him?
Not with reproaches, not with anger. She knew her man well. To hold him
off was the first thing. To postpone the formal proposal, and