“I am delighted to know you recognise how inefficient they are,” Prince Vladilas said. “It is criminal the way they have allowed the country to sink into a complacency that has risked, if not the lives, at least the independence of every Zokālan.”
He spoke scathingly, and then, as Ileana did not reply, he said,
“You yourself must bear a great deal of the blame. You have imagination and an unusual amount of intelligence for a woman, but you could not see what was staring you in the face, that Hungary, Rumania or Serbia could gobble you up and hardly lose one soldier in the process.”
Because she recognised that he was right, it made Ileana all the angrier.
“That is your story and you have made everybody believe it,” she fumed, “but personally, I think you have invented it to suit your ow
