"
"But you did not agree!" screamed Tellier. "Your Highness did not
agree!"
"Most certainly I agreed. Not to agree would have been to insult them
yet a second time!"
"A week!" groaned Tellier, throwing up his hands, with a gesture of
despair. "Then all is lost!"
"How lost?" demanded Markeld, red with anger. "In what way lost? Have a
care of what you say!"
Tellier controlled himself by a mighty effort and managed to speak with
some approach to calmness.
"The German Emperor will not waste a week, Your Highness. That is not
his way, as you very well know. He will be at work every hour--every
minute!"
"What can he accomplish, if the British foreign office will do nothing?
Will he take the affair into his own hands? He will not dare!"
"He might dare, Your Highness; he has dared things more perilous than
that. But how do we know the British foreign office will do nothing?"
"I tell you," repeated the Prince, hotly, "that Lord Vernon is a
gentleman--something you do not seem to understand; that he is ill--
something you seem to doubt!"
"In diplomacy, Your Highness, even a gentleman may sometimes lie, or, at
least, disguise the truth. Perhaps even before this, he has hinted to
the Emperor that he will not interfere, if he acts promptly--perhaps
this illness is merely a ruse to avoid a situation the most awkward.
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