The Pencil-Sketch

"And whence do you foresee danger, princess?" asked Lestocq.

"The regent knows all! She knows our plans and combinations. In a word,
she knows that we conspire, and that you are the principal agent in the
conspiracy."

"Then I am lost!" sighed Lestocq, gliding down upon a chair.

"No, not quite," said Elizabeth, with a smile, "for I have saved you.
Ah, I should never have believed that the playing of comedy was so
easy, but I tell you I have played one in a masterly manner. Fear was my
teacher; it taught me to appear so innocent, to implore so affectingly,
that Anna herself was touched. Ah, and I wept whole streams of tears, I
tell you. That quite disarmed the regent. But you must bear the blame if
my eyes to-day are yet red with weeping, and not so brilliant as usual."

And Princess Elizabeth ran to the toilet-table to examine critically her
face in the glass.

"Yes, indeed," she cried, with a sort of terror, "it is as I feared. My
eyes are quite dull. Lestocq, you must give me a means, a quick and sure
means, to restore their brightness."

Thus speaking, Elizabeth looked constantly in the glass, full of care
and anxiety about her eyes.

"I shall appear less beautiful to him to-day," she murmured; "he will,
in thought, compare me with Eleonore Lapuschkin, and find her handsomer
than I. Lestocq, Lestocq!" she then called aloud, impatiently stamping
with her little foot, "I tell you that you must immediately prescribe a
remedy that will restore the brilliancy of my eyes."