SOPHY OF KRAVONIA
have anything to say to Rastatz!" He rose and bowed over her hand. "Much may happen between now and Saturday. Look about you, watch, and think!"
The General's final injunction, at least, Sophy lost no time in obeying; and on the slightest thought three things were obvious: the King was very grateful to her; Stenovics wished at any rate to appear very grateful to her; and, for some reason or another, Stenovics wished her memory to be wrong, to the end that the life of Mistitch and his companion (the greater included the less) might be spared. Why did he wish that?
Presumably—his words about the relation of discipline to policy supported the conclusion—to avoid that disturbance which the Prince had forecasted as the result of Mistitch's being put to death. But the Prince was not afraid of the disturbance—why should Stenovics be? The Commandant was all confidence—was the Minister afraid? In some sense he was afraid. That she accepted. But she hesitated to believe that he was afraid in the common sense that he was either lacking in nerve or overburdened with humanity, that he either feared fighting or would shrink from a salutary severity in repressing tumult. If he feared, he feared neither for his own skin nor for the skin of others; he feared for his policy or his ambition.
These things were nothing to her; she was for the Prince, for his policy and his ambition. Were they the same as Stenovics's? Even a novice at the game could see that this by no means followed of necessity. The King was elderly, and went a-fishing. The Prince was young, and a martinet. In age, Stenovics was between the two—nearly twenty
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