gain
time. If the Chancellor had been right, and things were as bad as they
appeared, the King's death would precipitate a crisis. Might, indeed,
overturn the throne.

And Karl had changed. The old days when he loved trouble were gone. His
thoughts, like all thoughts these days, she reflected contemptuously,
were turned to peace, not to war. He was for beating his swords into
ploughshares, with a vengeance.

To hold him off, then. To gain time.

The King was very feeble. This affair of yesterday had told on him. The
gossip of the Court was that the day had seen a change for the worse.
His heart was centered on the Crown Prince.

Ah, here was another viewpoint. Suppose the Crown Prince had not come
back? What would happen, with the King dead, and no king? Chaos, of
course. A free hand to revolution. Hedwig fighting for her throne, and
inevitably losing it. Then what about Karl and his dreams of peace?

But that was further than she cared to go just then. She would finish
certain work that she had set out to do, and then she was through. No
longer would dread and terror grip her in the night hours.

But she would finish. Karl should never say she had failed him. In her
new rage against him she was for cleaning the slate at once. She had
in her possession papers for which he waited or pretended to wait;
data secured by means she did not care to remember; plans and figures
carefully compiled--a thousand deaths in one, if, they were found on
her. She would get them out of her hands at once.

It was still but little after five. She brought her papers together on
her small mahogany desk, from such hiding places as women know--the
linings of perfumed sachets, the toes of small slippers, the secret
pocket in a muff; and having locked her doors, put them in order. Her
hands were trembling, but she worked skillfully. She was free until the
dinner hour, but she had a great deal to do. The papers in order, she
went to a panel in the wall of her dressing-room; and, sliding it aside,
revealed the safe in which her jewels were kept. Not that her jewels
were very valuable, but the safe was there, and she used it.

The palace, for that matter, was full of cunningly contrived
hiding-places. Some, in times of stress, had held jewels. Others--rooms
these, built in the stone walls and carefully mapped--had held even
royal refugees themselves. The map was in the King's possession, and
descended from father to son, a curious old pape