“That the Duke of Monte Alloro is in failing health—­and that her Highness’s year of widowhood ended yesterday.”

There was a silence.  Odo, who had reseated himself, rose and walked to the window.  The shutters stood open and he looked out over the formless obscurity of the gardens.  Above the intervening masses of foliage the Borromini wing raised its vague grey bulk.  He saw lights in Maria Clementina’s apartments and wondered if she still waked.  An hour or two earlier she had given him her hand in the contra-dance at the state ball.  It was her first public appearance since the late Duke’s death, and with the laying off of her weeds she had regained something of her former brilliancy.  At the moment he had hardly observed her:  she had seemed a mere inanimate part of the pageant of which he formed the throbbing centre.  But now the sense of her nearness pressed upon him.  She seemed close to him, ingrown with his fate; and with the curious duality of vision that belongs to such moments he beheld her again as she had first shone on him—­the imperious child whom he had angered by stroking her spaniel, the radiant girl who had welcomed him on his return to Pianura.  Trescorre’s voice aroused him.

“At any moment,” the minister was saying, “her Highness may fall heir to Monte Alloro.  It is the moment for which Austria waits.  There is always an Archduke ready—­and her Highness is still a young woman.”

Odo turned slowly from the window.  “I have told you that this is impossible,” he murmured.

Trescorre looked down and thoughtfully fingered the documents in his hands.

“Your Highness,” said he, “is as well-acquainted as your ministers with the difficulties that beset us.  Monte Alloro is one of the richest states in Italy.  It is a pity to alienate such revenues from Pianura.”

The new Duke was silent.  His minister’s words were merely the audible expression of his own thoughts.  He knew that the future welfare of Pianura depended on the annexation of Monte Alloro.  He owed it to his people to unite the two sovereignties.

At length he said:  “You are building on an unwarrantable assumption.”

Trescorre raised an interrogative glance.

“You assume her Highness’s consent.”

The minister again paused; and his pause seemed to flash an ironical light on the poverty of the other’s defences.

“I come straight from her Highness,” said he quietly, “and I assume nothing that I am not in a position to affirm.”

Odo turned on him with a start.  “Do I understand that you have presumed—?”

His minister raised a deprecating hand.  “Sir,” said he, “the Archduke’s envoy is in Pianura.”

4.2.

Odo, on his return to Pianura, had taken it for granted that de Crucis would remain in his service.

There had been little talk between the two on the way.  The one was deep in his own wretchedness, and the other had too fine a tact to intrude on it; but Odo felt the nearness of that penetrating sympathy which was almost a gift of divination.  He was glad to have de Crucis at his side at a moment when any other companionship had been intolerable; and in the egotism of his misery he imagined that he could dispose as he pleased of his friend’s future.