"What is to be done about last night?" he asked sullenly.
"Nothing at present. I am going to the palace at two o'clock--I shall
see the King, and find out whether my signet is lost, stolen or
strayed. Meanwhile, keep your own counsel! If you have been betrayed
into giving your confidence to a spy in the foreign service, as I
imagine--(for the King has never employed a spy, and is not likely to
do so), and he makes known his information, it can be officially
denied. The official denial of a Government, Jost, like charity, has
before now covered a multitude of sins!"
An instinctive disinclination for further conversation brought the
interview between them abruptly to a close, and Jost, full of a
suspicious alarm, which he was ashamed to confess, drove off to his
newspaper offices. The Premier, meantime, though harassed by secret
anxiety, managed to display his usual frigid equanimity, when, after
Jost's departure, his private secretary arrived at the customary time,
to transact under his orders the correspondence and business of the
day. This secretary, Eugene Silvano by name, was a quiet self-contained
young man, highly ambitious, and keenly interested in the political
situation, and, though in the Premier's service, not altogether of his
way of thinking. He called the Marquis's attention now to a letter that
had missed careful reading on the previous day.
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