DANGER AHEAD
In looking back upon the events of those days—as I now do from the calm autumn of my life—I am always struck by the extraordinary fact that I am still alive. For, from the moment that it began to be whispered about in the fashionable parts of Paris that the Princesa Ana de Carbajal was tricking his Highness the Prince of Csaba (in Hungary) and Miranda Vitoria (in Spain), who, although of the Royal House of Austria, intended to espouse her morganatically if he possibly could, my life began to be in danger. That is to say, it would begin to be in danger directly the Prince of Csaba learned, as he very soon must learn, that the Princess was being gallanted about by an Englishman, who was considered to be so far her inferior as to cause it to be said that she had contracted a love affair with a person beneath her.
For these haughty, arrogant Spanish-Austrians living in Paris had the impertinence to state that I, Adrian Trent, an English gentleman (to say nothing of my being also an English nobleman and an officer of French mousquetaires), was beneath the Princess, or—or Damaris, as I always thought of her. It made my blood boil, I can tell you, when I learned such was the case (and I hope it makes yours boil, too, who read, if you are a countryman of mine), and if there had ever been on my part any idea of drawing back from the part I had agreed to play with Damaris—which, in solemn truth, there was not—it only confirmed me all the more in the determination to play that part out to the very end.
I would, I swore to myself, so enact the part of the girl's lover that Csaba should have nothing left to do but to retire from his position of prétendu and aspirant and resign all claims to her hand; and also, which I hoped would be the case, I would so irritate his absurd hidalgo pride as to draw him into an embroglio with me; and then—even though he were forty times the hidalgo and don he was, and had forty times the blood of Charles qui triche and of that murderer, Philip II. in his veins—I would so humiliate him and all his following that they would never dare to be insolent to any English gentleman again.
Only—I forgot one thing. Or, perhaps, I did not know one thing which I should have known. I should not have forgotten that no descendant of Philip, nor any one who was related to him, was likely to meet me in a fair and open way. Not they! Be sure of that. And it was from this lack of knowledge, or this forgetfulness, that I nearly got caught in a trap, that I was nearly done barbarously to death, and that I nearly lost the great happiness of my life. However, this you shall read.
But Damaris knew, and, knowing, she did not mean to have me fall into the trap. And all this you are to read as well.
"Now, my lord," she said to me one fine night, when I had waited on her, "this is the very occasion when we are to begin to arouse the demon of jealousy in Csaba's manly bosom. To-night we are going to sow the poison seed. Therefore prepare yourself."
"I am prepared. What is to be done?"
"I am going to the ball at the Hôtel d'Aragon, his house. But you are not—yet you will be there. See, here is his invitation to Monsieur—blank. That blank is left because I forced him to give me an invitation for a friend of mine, whose name I would fill up. Observe, mon ami, I fill it up with yours." Whereon, stooping over a scrutoire, she wrote in the name of Lord Trent.
"It will be pleasant to go to the ball," I said. "I presume I shall have one dance with you?"