An awkward pause followed, during which I thought of that interview with the gipsy so many years before. Perhaps Max was thinking of it also, for his face grew very hard, and I knew by experience that he was battling with the temper that was trying to get possession of him. Nothing was said on the subject, however, and when Marquart had recovered his self-possession (why he should have lost it I cannot say) we followed our elders into the house. Though he endeavoured not to show it, I am inclined to believe that my father was more touched by his old Minister's visit than he would have liked us to suppose. At any rate, he forebore to indulge in his usual fits of cynicism. Though at dinner that evening he did not once refer to Pannonia, I feel certain a large portion of his thoughts were with her. Indeed, all things considered, it could scarcely have been otherwise. Since the establishment of the Republic, the old Chancellor had held aloof from public affairs. Nothing would induce him to take any part in the new state of things. "They have mounted their horse of folly," he had observed when he had been approached on the subject, "let them ride it to death. I, for one, will not attempt to stop them." With that he had retired to his castle at Friedelbain, and had sat himself down to work out his Logarithms and to wait for the old order to reassert itself. This he confidently believed would some day come to pass.
After dinner, my father and Marquart withdrew to the former's study, while Max and I joined our mother in the drawing-room. Her lady-in-waiting, for though we were in exile we still preserved the semblance of a Court, was reading to her; but when we entered, at a signal from my mother, she stopped and put away her book. It was easily seen that the former had been upset by something, for, when we spoke to her, her thoughts seemed far away, and she answered with a hesitation that was by no means usual to her. Another thing struck me as remarkable, and that was her treatment of Max. They had not quarrelled; indeed, I had never known them to do such a thing, and yet her behaviour towards him seemed based on something that I could not for the life of me understand. It was as if she were trying to make up to him for an unintentional wrong that she had done him, and which she feared he might not forgive when he discovered. To add further to this strange state of affairs, the more amiable she was towards him the more ill at ease did he become with her. He seemed restless, discontented, and yet particularly anxious to be on friendly terms with myself, the one person of all others, after what had happened that afternoon, whom he might have been forgiven had he ignored. I could not understand it all, and the more I thought of it the more it troubled me. Surely Max did not imagine that I deemed it likely I should ever ascend the throne! I could not believe that he would be so foolish as to attach any credence to the old superstition concerning the Michael cross, or that even if he did, he would be weak enough to allow it to embitter his life.