“There are the troops you were to train?” she asked.
“Yes, God help me, and now they are here I have not a single Saxon officer available--not that a corps of Turenne’s veterans could train these savages!”
Aurora knew, though she forbore to mention it, that Augustus had failed to fulfil his side of the bargain, and had not been able to raise a single regiment of the German troops promised to Peter, nor to pay him anything for the maintenance of the Muscovites sent into Lithuania.
“So you see,” added the Elector, with rather a bitter smile, “that my position is desperate on all sides.”
He crossed to her chair; she took his hand and pressed her soft cheek against his rings and ruffles.
“My poor dear,” she said caressingly. “I wonder if I can help you now, to return a little all the joy you have given me?”
She would have kissed his hand, but he prevented her, eagerly lifted her face and kissed her lips.
“What have I done for you!” he cried. “Why, you have gilded all my life!”
“You have been very good to me,” she said, a little wistfully. “Men can be so cruel. I think you hardly know how grateful women are for kindness.”
He smiled tenderly; his handsome face lightened of half its care as he looked at her.
“Yes, women like me,” she replied. “Why--you might get tired of me.” She caught her breath a little. “I might fade--I am not as pretty as I was--but you----”
“Thank you,” said the Countess unsteadily. “Thank you for loving me. That is why I want to help you--you have made life wonderful to me by your love----”
He dropped his hands to her shoulders and she looked up at him.
“And you--have you not loved me, Aurora?” he asked.
Augustus did not understand her mood, he was not a man to nicely read a woman’s complexities; and the next second Aurora did not understand it herself, and was lifting her shoulders with a laugh both for her words and his bewilderment.
“I am a silly creature,” she said lightly, “but I only seek to please you.”
She gently drew herself away, rose and went to the fire; the yellow coat, the gleaming hair, dressed in long, smooth curls slightly disordered and falling over the smooth white fur; the proud air and bearing of her, the piquant, gay face, made a fair picture in the brilliant glow that shone on her from head to foot and threw her figure, a thing of light against the gloomy background of the room, darkening in the fading light of the winter afternoon.