The Adventure of Princess Sylvia

Books By

C. N. And A. M. Williamson

The Lightning Conductor

The Princess Passes

My Friend The Chauffeur

Lady Betty Across The Water

Rosemary In Search Of A Father

The Car Of Destiny

The Chaperon

The Princess Virginia

Set In Silver

Etc., Etc.

The Adventure Of Princess Sylvia

By

Mrs. C. N. Williamson

New York

Doubleday, Page & Company

1909

Authorized Edition

Doubleday, Page & Company

To

My American Princess

Mrs. Clarence Postley

Contents

I. The Adventure Begins 3

II. The Inadvertence Of Frau Johann 24

III. The Young Man With The Bare Knees 34

IV. Max Versus Maximilian 66

V. Not Down In The Programme 81

VI. The Honours Of The Day 98

VII. Ten Minutes Grace 107

VIII. THE BEAR IN His DEN 131

IX. A White Night 152

X. "The Emperor Will Understand" 186

XI. The Last Of The Magic Citrons 202

XII. Between Man And Man 221

XIII. News By Telephone 248

XIV. The Chancellor'S Luck 256

XV. The Oldness Of The Chancellor 284

XVI. The Opening Of A Door 297

XVII. The Third Course 302

The Adventure Of Princess Sylvia

The Adventure of Princess Sylvia

Chapter I

The Adventure Begins

"Who is Sylvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her?"

"I'm dashed if I do!" said the Princess.

"My dear--if anyone should hear you!" groaned the Grand Duchess. "He is a most estimable young man, I am sure, and a very suitable match."

"Call him a match, if you like; he's certainly a stick. Anyway, he's not a match for me. There's only one existing." And the Princess's eyes were lifted to the heavens, as if the being at whom she hinted were placed high as the sun that shone above her.

The Grand Duchess was not herself "Hereditary." Her dear lord and master had been that, which was perhaps the reason why such stateliness as she had was almost all acquired. She dropped it sometimes, when alone with her unmarried, unmanageable young daughter; and to-day (in the sweet, old-fashioned garden of the house at Richmond, lent by Queen Victoria) was one of these occasions. The Grand Duchess pouted, and looked like a plump, sulky, elderly child, as she inquired what the Princess Sylvia expected in the way of a matrimonial prize.

"What do I expect?" echoed the young lady. "I expect an emperor. In fact, _the_ Emperor." For a few moments the Grand Duchess of Eltzburg-Neuwald remained dumb. Then she inadequately murmured, "Dear me!" Yet her demeanour did not suggest a stricken mind. She merely looked surprised, with an added expression that might signify a slow mental readjustment.

"It is really not entirely impossible," she commented at last. "But-- the Emperor of Rhaetia is a very great man."

"He is the only man," returned the Princess calmly. "He always has been. He is, and ever will be. He is the Napoleon of his generation, without Napoleon's meanness or brutality. Although he's not an Englishman, even you admit his virtues."

"Don't speak as if I were bristling with English prejudices," scolded the Grand Duchess. "I ceased to be English when I married your father. But why did you never mention this--er--desire of yours before?"

"I am far too maidenly," responded Sylvia, "to give my feeling any such bold name. _I_ have not ceased to be English, if my mother has. Indeed, I give my feeling no name at all. I haven't spoken of it if there be an 'it' to speak of--before, simply because really I'm not crying for a particular toy to play with. I'm only saying, if I can't have _that_, I won't have another toy a poor, unworthy toy."

"You call Prince Henri d'Ortens a 'poor, unworthy toy?'"

"Compared with the Emperor of Rhaetia and compared with me. Look at me, mother. Would I not make an empress?"

Sylvia laughed, sprang up from the seat that girdled the great trunk of the Lebanon cedar, and stood with her bright head erect, her lips still smiling.

The August sun streamed down upon the girl and bathed her in its glory. Her hair was a network of spun gold, under its radiance; her dark eyes jewels; her skin roses and snow; her simple white muslin gown a dazzling robe fit for a fairy, rather than an earthly princess.

Yes, she would make an empress, or she would make a goddess. So a man must have thought, even if he had not dared to love her. And so thought her mother.

"The dear Queen has never really favoured poor Henri," murmured the Grand Duchess, a light of introspection in her eyes. Already the French Prince, with pretensions to the incomparable hand of Sylvia, was "_poor_ Henri." "I mean, she has never favoured him as a match for you, though she intimated to me yesterday that she saw no insurmountable objections--if you cared for each other--"

"But we don't. At least I don't. Which is all that signifies."

"Pray do not be so flippant. As for Maximilian of Rhaetia, it is perhaps natural that he has never been thought of in connection with you, my dear. He is, no doubt, the most sought after _parti_ in--well, yes, I may say in the world. Not a girl with Royal blood in her veins but would go on her knees to him--"

"I would not," cried Sylvia. "I might worship him, but he should go on his knees to _me_."

"I doubt if those knees will ever bend to man or woman," said the Grand Duchess. "That, however, is a mere matter of speech. I am serious now, and I wish you to be. Though you are a very beautiful girl, my child--there is no disguising that fact from you, as it has been dinned into your ears since you were old enough to understand-- and there is no better blood in Europe than runs in your veins; still, our circumstances are--er--unfortunately such that--that we are, for the present, slightly handicapped."

"We're beggars," said Sylvia. "But Cophetua married a beggar maid;" and she smiled.

"Pray don't liken yourself to any such persons, my dear," objected the Grand Duchess, who, on principle, had so often objected to Sylvia's unconventionalities that the attitude of objection had become chronic. "Your father is dead. The Grand Duchy of Eltzburg-Neuwald has been absorbed by Prussia--for a price, it is true; but it is your brother who has had most of the benefit of that price. And though my dear husband was second cousin to the Emperor of Germany, who loved him during his life as an elder brother, and though you are strictly _within_ the pale from which Maximilian is entitled to select a wife, one must admit that there are other girls who, from a worldly point of view, might be considered more suitable."

"I wasn't thinking of the worldly point of view," said the incorrigible one, with unusual softness. She could be gentle and tender enough in certain moods; but she was used to taking the lead with her mother.

"People--men or women--with Royal blood in their veins _must_ think of that point of view," returned the Grand Duchess. She was not Royal, save by marriage, though her long since dead father, the English Duke of Northminster, claimed ancestry from kings and had married a near relation of Queen Victoria. But he had been one of the richest men in the world at the time of his daughter's marriage; and the exchequer of Eltzburg-Neuwald had sadly needed replenishing. It, or rather its representative, had finally swallowed a large part of the Duke of Northminster's private fortune, the enormous remainder having vanished in a great financial panic; so that just before the Hereditary Grand Duke of Eltzburg-Neuwald had been gathered to his fathers, he had been induced to make terms with his cousin, the then reigning German Emperor, for the Grand Duchy. Thus deprived of his inheritance, the only son, Friedrich, had joyfully accepted an offer of adoption as Crown Prince from the childless old King of Abruzzia.

The widowed Grand Duchess, not loving the thought of a German residence, when bereft of her ancient importance; hating her son's adopted land of Abruzzia, which she considered "half savage" (yet liking still less the alternative of a wandering life on the Continent, or a home with the uncle who had inherited her father's title and estates), had gratefully caught at Queen Victoria's kindness. Ever since Sylvia Victoria Alexandra Mary Valerie Hildegarde, her daughter, had been a proud little Princess of ten years old, the two had lived in the ancient, rose-and-ivy-embowered house placed at their disposal by Her Gracious Majesty. Sylvia had been educated in England; all her thoughts and ideas were those of an English girl, and a somewhat "advanced" English girl. Her very beauty was more English than German--the delicately chiselled nose, the short, haughty upper lip, the frank imperiousness of the hazel eyes under the black sweep of lashes, and dark, soft curve of brow. She was twenty-one now, and vastly tired of being Royal, for already her high place in the world had brought her more of inconvenience than privilege.

"I don't wish the Emperor of Rhaetia to want me because I am suitable, but because I am irresistible," she asseverated. "I want love--love-- or I won't marry at all."

"But that is nonsense," gravely pronounced the elder, steeped for long years in all the traditions and conventionalities of Royalty. "Women in our position must be satisfied with the hope that love may come after marriage; or, if not, we must rest content in doing our duty in that state of life to which heaven has been pleased to call us!"

"Bother duty!" remarked Sylvia, with an impatient disregard for those elegancies of speech to which she had been so carefully brought up. "Thank goodness, nowadays not all the king's horses and all the king's men can make even a princess marry any one against her will. I hate the everlasting cant about duty in marriage. When people love each other they are kind and good and sweet and virtuous, because it is a pleasure, not because it's duty; and that's the only sort of loyalty worth having between man and woman, according to my ideas. I would not take anything less from a man; and I should despise him if he were ready to accept less from me."

"You are almost impious, Sylvia; you ought to have been born a _bourgeoise_," said her mother. But at this moment, when the clash of tongues, as opinion struck upon opinion, was imminent, there occurred a happy diversion in the arrival of a servant with letters.

Sylvia, who was a neglectful correspondent, had nothing; but two or three bulky envelopes had come for the Grand Duchess, and eagerly she broke the seal of one which bore the hand writing of her son Friedrich, now Crown Prince of Abruzzia.

"Open the others for me, dear, while I see what Fritz has to say," she requested. And Sylvia leisurely obeyed.

There was a note from an old friend of whom she was fond; and she had just begun to be interested in the first paragraph, when an ejaculation from her mother caused a quick lifting of her lashes.

The Grand Duchess was staring at the scrawled pages, held close to her near-sighted eyes, while a bright flush troubled the surface of her usually serene countenance.

"What is the matter?" exclaimed Sylvia. "Anything wrong with Fritz?"

"No--no--nothing in the least wrong," murmured the Grand Duchess absent-mindedly. "Far from it, indeed; but really--this is the most _extraordinary_ coincidence. It seems almost too strange that it should come at such a moment. Yet I suppose I am not dreaming?" She peered questioningly at Sylvia; for it must be confessed that the Grand Duchess did sometimes sleep, perchance even dream, in the warm seclusion of the old riverside garden.

"Life is a dream!" hummed the Princess. "But you _look_ awake, dear; and I've never known you to talk whole sentences in your sleep. What has Fritz been doing?"

"It is not Fritz; it's your emperor," returned her mother.

It was now Sylvia's turn to flush. This, then, was the "coincidence"! She wished, yet vaguely dreaded, to ask for the purport of the news. Of course it was ridiculous to blush, because it was ridiculous to care. But the fact remained that she did blush and that she did care.

Princess Sylvia had never seen Maximilian of Rhaetia; nevertheless, as she had half laughingly, half earnestly declared, he had been for her the one real man in a world of shadow men, since childish days. In the little room grandiloquently called her "study" (a room sacred to herself alone, whose secrets even her mother did not share) were preserved many souvenirs of the Emperor, which had been accumulating for years. There were paragraphs cut from newspapers, setting forth his great prowess as a soldier, hunter, and mountaineer, with dramatic anecdotes of his haughty courage when in danger. There were portraits of Maximilian, beginning from an early age, up to the present, when he was shown as a tall, stern-eyed, passionate-lipped, aggressive-chinned young man of thirty. There were copies of pictures he had painted, plays he had written, music he had composed, fierce and warlike speeches he had delivered; accounts of improvements in guns and gun powder invented by him; with numerous other records of his accomplishments and achievements; for the Emperor of Rhaetia was, in his own mind, and that of his people, the one shining exception to the rule that a "Jack of all trades can be master of none." He was master of all, or at least all he had ever attempted--their name being legion--and Sylvia loved him because it was so. The locked drawers of her desk were hallowed by the records of her hero which they hid.

Now, the thought that flashed into her mind was that Fritz's letter might perhaps contain a gossiping account of the Emperor's engagement to one of those other Royal girls, who, as the Grand Duchess had justly observed, were more suitable to match him than poor, pretty little Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald. Maximilian was thirty years old (Sylvia knew his age to the day, almost to the hour); therefore it was remarkable that he had not long ago listened to the advice of his Chancellor and chosen a wife worthy to be Empress of Rhaetia and the mother of an heir.

"Guess what Fritz writes of him," said the Grand Duchess, controlling visible emotion.

Sylvia also controlled hers, crushing it down with a relentless hand, and telling herself that what she felt was at its worst but wounded vanity.

"He's going to be married?" she quietly suggested.

"That depends." Her mother laughed nervously, with a stifled and mysterious delight. "Guess again--but no, I won't tease you. After this letter, coming as it has in the midst of our conversation, I shall be a firm believer in _telepathy_. It is too wonderful. He may be going to be married; he may not. For, my dear, _dear_ child, he wants--to marry _you_."

Sylvia sprang to her feet. Perhaps such exhibition of feeling on the part of a Royal maiden decorously sued (by proxy) for her hand, was hardly correct. But Sylvia thought of no such considerations. She did not even know that she had left her chair. For a moment a delicate blue haze floated between her eyes and the Grand Duchess's pleased, plump face.

"He--wants--to--marry--me?" she echoed dazedly.

"Yes, you, my darling. Providence must have drawn your inclination toward him. It is really a romance. Some day, no doubt, it will be told to the world in history."

Sylvia did not hear. She stood quite still, her hands clasped before her, the letter she had been reading on the grass at her feet.

"Did he--the Emperor--tell this to Fritz and ask him to write to you?" she questioned.

"Not--not exactly that, dear," admitted the Grand Duchess, her face changing; for Sylvia was so exacting and held such peculiar ideas, that it was sometimes rather difficult to know how she would receive the most ordinary announcements.

The rapt expression faded from Sylvia's features, like the passing of dawn.

"Not--exactly that?" she repeated. "Then what--how?"

"Perhaps--though it is not strictly the correct thing--you had better read Fritz's letter?"

Sylvia put her hands behind her back with a childlike gesture. "I-- somehow I don't want to. Please tell me," she said simply.

"Well, then, you know what an admiration Fritz has felt for Count von Markstein, the Rhaetian Chancellor, ever since the visit the Chancellor paid to Abruzzia? They have kept up a correspondence from time to time, and the sort of friendship which often exists between an old man with a great career behind him and a young man with his still to come. Now it seems (in the _quite_ informal manner by which such affairs are generally begun) that Count von Markstein has written confidentially to Fritz, as our only near male relative, to ask how we would regard an alliance between you and Maximilian, or if we have already disposed of your hand. The Emperor is inclined to listen to advice at last; and you, as a Protestant Princess--"

"Yes, a Protestant Princess more than ever, for I protest against being approached upon such terms!" Sylvia exclaimed.

The countenance of the Grand Duchess became overcast. There were certain drawbacks in having a spoiled beauty for a daughter. "Sylvia," she ejaculated, "surely you don't mean--surely you are not going to throw over such a marvellous chance as this--a chance that a queen's daughter might gladly accept--because of a sentimental schoolgirl scruple?"

"Why do you suppose the Emperor--or his Chancellor--thinks of any one so insignificant for such a high place, when there are others far more eligible?" asked Sylvia, with reflective dryness, answering one question by another.

"Fritz goes on to mention various good reasons in his letter, if you would only let me tell you, and would take them sensibly," said the much-enduring elder woman.

"I should like to hear them, at all events," Sylvia judicially replied.

"Well, as I was beginning to explain, the Empress of Rhaetia must be a Protestant. At present, as Fritz says, there are not many eligible young Protestant Princesses who would be acceptable to the Rhaetian people and add to the Emperor's popularity. Then, as you know, Maximilian is a man who dominates those around him; he wishes to marry a young girl who, though of Royal birth, could not by any possibility have been heiress to a throne of her own. I fancy he would choose to mould his wife and to take a girl without too many important or importunate relatives; for he is not one who would dream of adding to his own greatness by that of a wife. Besides, Maximilian is partial to England, and the fact that you have had an English education would be favourably rather than unfavourably regarded both by him and Count von Markstein--at least, so Fritz believes. And though I have never allowed you, since you were a child, to have your photograph taken, and you have lived in such seclusion that you have been little seen, still the rumour has somehow reached Maximilian's ears that you are--not ugly. He has been heard more than once to remark that whatever the future Empress of Rhaetia might be, she would not be a plain woman; therefore, altogether--"

"Therefore, altogether, my references appear to be satisfactory, and at a pinch I might do for the place," broke in Sylvia, with hot impatience. "Oh, mother, I will marry Maximilian, or I will marry no man; but I won't be married to him in Count von Markstein's hateful cut-and-dried way."

"It's the Emperor's way, as well as Markstein's."

"Then for once in his big, grand, obstinate life, he shall learn that there are other wills than his in the world; and that there is one woman who won't play Griselda even for the sake of being his Empress."

The Grand Duchess looked worried (as well she might, had she been blessed or banned with a prophetic soul to whisper of the future). "You look so odd when you say that," she observed; "as if you had-- some kind of plan."

"And so I have," confessed Sylvia. "It came to me suddenly--as all inspirations come. It's in embryo yet; but I shall fill in the details." She came close to her mother, and knelt down on the grass at her feet, looking up with a light in her eyes that no man, and few women, could have resisted.

There was nobody save the Grand Duchess and the late roses to see how a young princess threw her mantle of dignity to the winds; for the two ladies did not keep Royal state and a Royal retinue in the quaint old house at Richmond; and the arbour hid their confidence from intrusive eyes or ears.

"You do love me, don't you, dear?" cooed Sylvia, softly as a dove.

"You know I do, my daughter, though I don't pretend to understand you."

"People grow dull when we understand them too well. It's like solving a puzzle; there's no more fun in it when it's finished. But you _do_ wish me to be happy?"

"More than anything else--except, of course, Fritz--"

"Fritz is a man and can take care of himself. _I_ must only do the best I can. And there's something I want _so_ much, and it would give me a heaven on earth, all my own, if I could win it. Maximilian's love, quite for myself, as a _girl_, not a proper, 'Protestant Princess'. I think I see how I _can_ win it, too, if you will only help me."

"I'll do my best," cried the Grand Duchess, carried out of herself into unwonted impulsiveness by kisses soft and sweet as falling rose-leaves. "Only I don't see what I _can_ do."

"But _I_ see; and you must promise to see with my eyes."

"They are very bright ones!" laughed her mother.

Princess Sylvia put both arms round the plump waist, and gave the Grand Duchess a hug. Then she laughed--an odd, musical, half-frightened laugh. "Mother, something wonderful is going to happen to you and me," she exclaimed. "We're going to have an adventure."

Chapter II

The Inadvertence Of Frau Johann

TWILIGHT fell late in the tiny Rhaetian village of Heiligengelt. So high on the mountain-side were set the few brown chalets, the simple inn, and the church with its Oriental spire, that they caught the last red rays of sunlight, to hold them flashing on burnished copper tiles and small bright window-panes long after the valley below slept in the shadows of night.

One September evening two carriages toiled up the steep winding road that led to the highest hamlet of the Rhaetian Alps, and a girl walking by the side of the foremost driver (minded, as he was, to save the tired horses) looked up to see Heiligengelt glittering like a necklet of jewels on the brown throat of the mountain. Each window was a separate ruby set in gold; the copper bulb that topped the church steeple was a burning carbuncle; while above the flashing band of gems towered the rocky face of the mountain, its steadfast features carved in stone, its brow capped with snow that caught the glow of sunset, or lay in blue-white seams along the wrinkles of its forehead.

The driver had assured the young English lady that she might remain in the carriage; her weight would be as nothing to the horses, who were used to carrying far heavier loads than this of to-day up the mountain road to Heiligengelt in the summer season, when many tourists came. But she had insisted on walking and the brown-faced fellow with the green hat and curly cock-feather liked her the better for her persistence. She was plainly dressed, and not half as grand in her appearance as some of the ladies who went up with him in July or August to visit little Heiligengelt; but, apart from her beauty (which his eye was not slow to see), there was something else that captured both admiration and respect. Perhaps, for one thing, her knowledge of Rhaetian--counted by other countries a difficult language, though bearing to German a cousinship closer than that which Romance bears to Italian--did much to warm the Rhaetian's heart. At all events, without stopping to analyze his feeling, or grope for its cause, the driver of the first carriage found himself bestowing voluble confidences upon the charming foreigner.

He told her of his life: how he had not always lived in the valley and driven horses for a living. Before he took a wife, and had a young family to rear, he had made his home in Heiligengelt, which was his native village. There his old mother still lived and kept the inn. He was glad that the ladies meant to stop with her for a few days; after the season was over, and the strangers had all been driven away by the cold and early flurries of snow, the poor mother grew weary of idleness and longed for the sight of new faces. There were not many neighbours in Heiligengelt. She would be pleased to see the English ladies, and would do her best to make them comfortable, though it was not often that strangers came so late in the year. The mother would be surprised as well as rejoiced at the sight of the Herrschaft, since it seemed that they had not written in advance. Still, they need not fear that her surprise would interfere with their welfare. Those who knew Frau Johann knew that her floors ever shone like wax, that her cupboard was never empty, that her linen was aired and scented like the new-mown hay. It was but justice to say this, although she was his mother. And besides, she had need always to be in readiness for distinguished guests, because--but the eloquent tongue of Alois Johann was suddenly silenced like the clapper of a bell which the ringer has ceased to pull, and his sunburnt face grew sheepish.

"Because of what?" urged his companion.

Alois shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "I was going to say a thing which I had no business to say," he confessed. "We men sneer at our women because they keep no secrets, yet sometimes we find ourselves near to the same foolishness. I must take care, and beg that the noble lady will not embarrass me with questions."

The noble lady obediently held her tongue, yet there was a twinkle under her long, downcast lashes, which might in turn have aroused Alois's curiosity if he had seen.

Slowly they climbed on; the two carriages, with the noble lady's noble mother, the middle-aged companion, the French maid, and the modest supply of luggage, toiling up behind.

At last they reached the inn with the steeply pointed roof of gray shingles and the big picture of Heiligengelt's patron saint portrayed in bright colours on the white house-wall. A characteristic call from Alois, sent forth before the highest plateau was reached, brought an apple-cheeked old dame to the front door; and it was the youngest of the travellers who asked, with a pleasant greeting, for the best suite of rooms that Frau Johann could provide.

The Rhaetian woman and her son exchanged a glance which mirrored mystery. Then Frau Johann regretted that her best rooms were already occupied by four gentlemen who came each year at this season to spend a week or ten days. They had the bedchambers commanding the finest view, and the only private sitting-room in the house; but there were other good rooms in plenty, and one of these could easily be transformed into a sitting-room, if the ladies desired.

An hour later, when the newcomers, mother, daughter, and companion, sat down to a hot supper in a room rendered hastily habitable for dining, the youngest of the three remarked to Frau Johann upon the peaceful stillness of her house.

"One would think that there was not a soul in the place save ourselves," she said. "Yet we are not your only guests, we know."

"The gentlemen who are stopping with me are away all day on the mountains," explained Frau Johann. "It is now the season for chamois-hunting, and it is for that sport and also some good climbing, only to be done by experts, that they come to me. To-night they do not return, but stop at--at a hut they have near the top of the Weisshorn, to begin work in the morning earlier than would be possible if they slept in the village. That, indeed, is their constant custom."

"Then they are rather selfish to keep your only sitting-room, since they can make but little use of it," said the girl. "And so I should like to hint, if I happened to meet them."

"May heaven forbid!" hastily ejaculated Frau Johann, almost dropping the plate of eggs with minced veal which she was carrying.

"Why not, then?" laughed the young English lady, who was the most beautiful creature the Rhaetian woman had looked upon for many a long day. "Are these gentlemen-hunters persons of great importance, that they must not be told the truth about themselves by those they have inconvenienced in their thoughtlessness?"

For an instant Frau Johann was dumb, as one who searches for an answer not easily to be found. "The gentlemen are good patrons of mine; therefore they are important to me, gracious Fräulein," she at last replied. "I should not like their feelings to be hurt."

"I was only joking," the girl assured her. "We are satisfied with this room, which you have made so pleasant for us. All I care for is that the _mountains_ be not private. I may climb as much as I like--I and my friend, Miss Collinson who is a daring mountaineer" (with this, she cast a glance at the companion, who visibly started in response, perhaps at the revelation of her skill); "for I suppose that your other guests have not engaged the whole Weisshorn for their own?"

The landlady's smile returned. "No, gracious Fräulein; you are free to wander as you will; but take care that you do not attempt feats of too great difficulty, and take care also that you are not mistaken for a chamois, to be shot."

"Even our prowess as climbers will hardly entitle us to such a distinction," replied the youngest of the ladies, who seemed so much more inclined toward general conversation than the others. "But wake us early to-morrow. We should like to have breakfasted and be out by half-past seven."

"And will you take a guide, gracious Fräulein? I can engage a good one if you wish to try some of the famous climbs."

"Thank you, no," said the girl. "We have our Baedeker and will only attempt such places as he pronounces safe for amateurs. There's an easy way to the top, we've read, and if to-morrow be fine we may undertake it. But what an excellent engraving you have over the fireplace, with the chamois horns above it! Isn't that a portrait of your Emperor?"

Frau Johann's eyes darted to the picture. "_Ach_! I meant to have had it carried away," she muttered.

The girl caught the words. "Why should it be carried away? Don't you love the Emperor, that you would have his face put out of sight?"

"Not love _unser Max_?" The exclamation came quick and indignant. "We worship him, gracious Fräulein; we would die for him any day, and think ourselves blessed with the chance. Oh, I would not let you go back to your own country with the thought that we do not love the best Kaiser a country ever had. As for the portrait, I did not know I spoke aloud; that sometimes happens to me, since I grow deaf and old. But I only wished it put away because it is so poor, it does _unser Max_ (that is what he is pleased to have us call him) no justice. You--you would not recognize him from that picture. The Kaiser is a very different-looking man."

With this, Frau Johann went out to fetch another dish, which was ready in the kitchen, to cool her hot face, and to scold herself for an old _dummkopf_, all the way downstairs.

In the bedchamber which had so recently been turned into a dining-drawing-room, the young lady took advantage of the landlady's temporary absence to indulge in long-stifled laughter.

"Poor, transparent old dear!" she exclaimed. "I'm sure she doesn't dream that one reads her like a book. She is in a sad fright now, lest we should recognize '_unser Max_' from his portrait, and spoil his precious incognito."

"Then you think that one of the gentlemen really is----" began the Grand Duchess.

"I am sure that he is," finished Princess Sylvia.

Chapter III

The Young Man With The Bare Knees

"THIS is perfectly _awful_!" groaned the unfortunate lady who passed under the name of Miss Collinson.

"Perfectly _splendid_!" corrected her companion.

The elder lady pressed Baedeker convulsively to her bosom, and sat down. "I shall have to stop here," she gasped, "all the rest of my life, and have my meals and night things sent up to me. I'm very sorry; but I shall never move again."

"Don't be absurd, dear; we're absolutely safe," said Sylvia. "I may be a selfish little wretch, but I wouldn't for worlds have brought you into danger. You've come so far; surely you can come a little farther? _Baedeker_ says you can. In ten minutes you'll be at the top."

"You might as well say I'll be in my grave; it amounts to much the same thing," retorted Miss Collinson, who was really Miss Jane M'Pherson, and had been Sylvia's governess. "I can't look down; I can't look up, because I keep thinking of what's behind me. After I get my breath and get used to things, I may be comparatively comfortable _here_; but as to stirring, there's no use thinking of it."

"You'd make an ideal hermitess," said Sylvia. "You've the very features for that profession; austere, yet benevolent. But you're not _really_ afraid now?"

"Not sitting down," admitted Miss M'Pherson, gradually regaining her accustomed calm. "Do you think you'd be afraid, and lose your head or anything, if I just strolled on to the top for the view, and came back to you in about half an hour?"

"No--o," said the governess. "I may as well accustom myself to loneliness, since I am obliged to spend my remaining years on this spot. But I'm not at all sure that the Grand Duchess would approve----"

"You mean Lady de Courcy. She wouldn't mind. She knows I have a steady head, and--physically--a good heart. Besides, I shall have only myself to look after; and one doesn't need a chaperon for a morning call on a mountain view."

"I'm not so certain about _this_ mountain view!"

"You're very subtle. But I _really_ haven't come out to look for him this morning. There's plenty of time for that by and by."

"Dear Princess, don't speak as if you could possibly do such a thing at _any_ time."

"Miss de Courcy, please! Why do you suppose we are all in _das Land im Gebirge_, if not to pursue a certain imperial eagle to his eyrie, where he masquerades as a common bird?"

"Ah, my dear, don't demean yourself, even to me, who know you so well. You are here not to _pursue_, but to give an Emperor who wants a Princess for his consort a chance to fall in love with herself."

"If he will! But what do Mary de Courcy and Jane Collinson know about the affairs of emperors and princesses? _Au revoir_, dear friend. Presently, if you find the courage to look, you will see me waving a handkerchief-flag at the top."

Sylvia took up her alpenstock and pushed on. There was a route to the highest peak of the Weisshorn only to be attacked by experienced climbers; but the path along which she and Miss M'Pherson had set out from Heiligengelt four hours ago was merely tedious, never dangerous. Sylvia knew that her governess was safe and not half as much frightened by the unaccustomed height as she pretended.

They had started at half-past seven, just as a September sun was beginning to draw the night chill out of the keen mountain air; and it was now nearly twelve. Sylvia was hungry.

In Wandeck, the second largest town of Rhaetia, she had bought rücksacks for herself and Miss M'Pherson; and to-day these acquisitions were being tested for the first time. Each bag stored an abundant luncheon for its bearer while on top, secured by straps passed across the shoulders, reposed a wrap to be used in rain or rest after violent exercise. Sylvia's rücksack grew heavy as she ascended, though at first its weight had seemed insignificant; and spying at a distance a green plateau on the mountainside, it occurred to her that it might be well to lighten the load and satisfy her appetite at the same time.

"That good M'Pherson is quite happy with Baedeker and won't be vexed if I am gone a little longer than I said," she assured herself. There was no gracious plateau at the top of the Weisshorn; only a sterile heap of rocks on which to stand for self-gratulation or incidentally to admire the view, and there was, besides, enough difficulty in reaching this lower point of vantage to make the venture attractive. The path zig-zagged up, a mere scratch on the face of the mountain; but the plateau, like a terrace laid out upon a buttress, could be gained only by scrambling over rough rocks and climbing in good earnest here and there. Beyond the visible strip of green, the natural terrace stretched away into mystery round the corner like the end of a picture in perspective.

Sylvia calculated the effort and decided that she was equal to it; but before she had gone halfway, she would gladly have stood once more on the path worn by the feet of less ambitious travellers. She even felt a certain sympathy with the sentiments Miss M'Pherson had expressed; yet there was nothing to do but go on. It would be worse to turn than to proceed. Her cheeks began to burn, and her heart to tap a warning against her side. How huge a giant was this mountain--towering above her, falling sheer away beneath her feet, down there where she did not care to look how--pitifully insignificant she!

But there was the plateau, bathed in sunshine like the Promised Land. And to her ears was wafted therefrom the sound of a man's voice, cheerily, melodiously jödelling.

"What if it should be he?" thought Sylvia. She had come all the way from England to meet him, and it was hard that he should jödel while she perished. Much good would it do her if her spirit beheld him bending over her crushed material remains.

Still the voice of the invisible one jödelled on.

"Help!" Sylvia added an impromptu to the chorus. "He may as well save me, be he emperor or tourist. Oh, I hope this isn't a lesson not to climb too high. Ought I to call for help in Rhaetian or English? I'll try both, to make quite sure."

She did try both, with the result that the jödelling suddenly stopped. Instead, an iron-shod boot rang against a rock. Forgetting fear in desire to know whether the actor now to appear for the first time on her life's stage would be hero or super, her foot slipped from its scanty hold. Stumbling, she slid from the rocky ledge down to the plateau, finally landing on her knees at the feet of a young man who strode hastily round the corner.

"Himmel!" exclaimed a voice, half laughing, half startled. She dared not look up, lest she should meet disappointment. Would it be he, sent to her by Destiny, or some tourist, sent by Cook?

One who knew Maximilian's habits well (the only one, besides her mother, wholly taken into confidence) had told her that to find him as a man, and not an emperor, she should make her pilgrimage to Heiligengelt in the chamois-hunting season. She had remembered this hint. She had come; was she now about to see?

Two brown hands were held out to help her. Slowly she raised her eyes. They travelled up and up. Beginning with a pair of big nailed boots, they glided over the knitted detail of woollen stockings, and were stopped for an instant at an unexpected obstacle in the shape of bare, muscular brown knees. (Thank goodness, at least Fate had spared her a tourist!) Short, shabby trousers; a gray coat, passemoiled with green, from one pocket of which protruded a great hunch of bread and ham, evidently just thrust in; broad shoulders; a throat like a column of bronze; a face--the blood leaped in Sylvia's veins and sang in her ears. It was he--it was he! Here was the eyrie: the eagle was at home.

All her life had but led up to this moment. Under the soft hat of green felt, adorned with the beard of a chamois, was the face she had dreamed of by night and day. A dark, austere face, with more of Mars than Apollo in its lines, but to her worth all the ideals of all the sculptors in the world. He was dressed as a chamois-hunter, and there was nothing in the well-worn costume to distinguish the wearer from the type he represented; but as easily might the eagle to whom she likened him try to pass for a barnyard fowl as this man for a peasant-- so Sylvia thought.

She hoped that he did not feel the beating in her fingers-ends as he caught her hands, lifted and set her on her feet. There was humiliation in this tempest of her pulses, knowing that he did not share it. To her, this meeting was an epoch: to him, a trivial incident. She would have keyed his emotion to hers, if she could, but since she had had years of preparation, he a single moment, perhaps she might have rested satisfied with the expression in his eyes.

It said, had she been calm enough to read it: "Is heaven raining goddesses to-day?"

Now, what was she to say to him? How make the most of this wonderful chance that had come, to know the man and not the Emperor? Each word should be chosen, like a bit of mosaic that fits into a complicated pattern. She should marshal her sentences as a general marshals his battalions, with a plan of campaign for each one. A spirit-monitor (a match-making monitor) seemed to whisper these advices in her ear; yet she was powerless to heed them. Like a school girl about to be examined for a scholarship, knowing that all the future might depend upon a single hour, the need to be resourceful left her dumb. How many times had she not planned her first conversation with Maximilian, the first words she should speak to rivet his attention, to make him feel that she was subtly different from any woman he had ever known? But now, epigrams turned tail and raced away from her like playful colts refusing to be caught.

"I hope you are not hurt?" asked the chamois-hunter, in the _patois_ dear to the mountain-folk of Rhaetia.

Here was a comfort; at least she was not to have the responsibility of playing the first card. Meekly she followed his lead.

"Only in the pride that comes before a fall," she answered, in the tongue she had delighted to learn, because it was her hero's. "There should be a sign between the path and this plateau: 'All save suicides should beware.'"

"We have never thought of the necessity, my mates and I," said the man in the gray coat passemoiled with green. "Until you came, _gna' Fräulein_, no tourist has cared to run the risk."

Sylvia's eyes lit suddenly with a sapphire spark. The spirit of mischief nipped her beating heart between rosy thumb and finger, daring her to a frolic--such a frolic as no girl on earth had ever had. And she would show this grave, austere, self-centred young hero a phase of life he had not seen before. Then, let come what would out of this adventure, at least she should have an Olympian episode to remember.

"Until _I_ came?" She caught up the words, standing before him on the spot where he had placed her. "But I am no tourist; I am an explorer."

He raised level, dark eyebrows; and when he smiled half his austerity was gone. So beautiful a girl need be no more than commonplace of thought and speech; indeed, the hunter of chamois expected little else from women. Yet this one bade fair to have surprises in reserve. He had brought down marvellous game to-day, such as no hunter before him had ever found upon the mountain-side.

"I know the Weisshorn well," said he, "and love it; but I cannot see how it rewards the explorer unless you are a climber or a geologist."

"I am neither; but I came in search of something that I have wanted all my life to see," replied the girl.

His face confessed curiosity. "Might one ask the name of the rare thing? Perhaps one might help in the search."

"I feel sure," replied Sylvia graciously, "that you could help me, if you would, as well as any one on earth."

"That is good hearing, lady, though I know not yet how I have deserved the compliment. First I must hear what you seek, and then----"

"I seek a rare plant, that grows only in high, places. It is said to be found here at certain seasons; though I have never met any one who can boast of plucking it. I would that I could be the first."

"Is it the Edelweiss, _gna' Fräulein_. Because, if so, I know where to take you."

She shook her head. "The botanical name is very hard to pronounce. But it is sometimes called by common people _Edelmann_. I should be disappointed to go away without a sight of it though I was warned it would not be wise to come."

"Those were wise who warned you, lady. I know of no such plant as that you mention. If it were here, I must have seen it. The chance was not worth the danger you have run."

"Oh, yes, the chance _was_ worth the danger. You--a chamois-hunter--to say that! You must run a thousand risks a day in seeking what you want."

"But I am a man. You are a woman; and women should keep to beaten paths and safety."

"I wonder, is that the theory of all Rhaetians? I know your Emperor holds it."

"Who told you that, _gna' Fräulein_." He gave her a sharp look; but her violet eyes were innocent of guile, as the flowers they resembled.

"Oh, many people. We hear much of him in England."

"Good things or bad?"

"The things that he deserves. Now, can you guess which? But I could tell you more if I were not so very, very hungry. I can't help seeing your luncheon, thrust into your pocket, perhaps, when you came to help me. Do you want it all" (she carefully ignored the contents of her rücksack), "or--would you share it?"

The chamois-hunter looked surprised. But then this was his first experience of a feminine explorer, and he quickly rose to the occasion.

"There is more bread and ham where this came from," he replied, with flattering alacrity. "Will you be graciously pleased to accept something of our best?"

"If _you_ please, then I shall be much pleased," she responded. Miss M'Pherson was forgotten. Fortunately the deserted lady was supplied with congenial literature, down below.

"I and some friends of mine have a sort of--hut round the corner," announced the chamois-hunter, with a gesture that indicated direction. "No woman has ever been our guest there, but I invite you to come, if you will. Or, if you prefer, remain here, and in a few minutes I will bring you such food as we have. At best it is not much to boast of. We chamois-hunters are poor men, living roughly."

Sylvia smiled, and imprisoned each new thought of mischief like a trapped bird. "I've heard you're rich in hospitality," she said. "Now is my chance to prove the story."

The eyes of the hunter, dark, brilliant, and keen as an eagle's, pierced hers. "You have no fear?" he said. "You are a woman, alone, in a desolate place. For what you know, my mates and I may be a set of brigands."

"Baedeker does not mention the existence of brigands at present in the Rhaetian Alps," retorted Sylvia, with quaint dryness. "I have always found him very trustworthy. I've great faith in the chivalry of Rhaetian men, whose Emperor--though he thinks meanly of women--sets so good an example. But if you knew how hungry I am, you would not keep me waiting for talk of brigands. Bread and butter is far more to the point."

"Even search for the _Edelmann_ may wait?"

"Yes; the _Edelmann may_ wait--on me." (The last two words were added in whisper.)

"You must pardon my going first," said the young man with the bare knees. "The way here is too narrow for politeness."

"Yet I wish that our peasants at home had such courteous manners as yours," Sylvia patronized him. "You Rhaetians need not go to Court, I see, for rules of behaviour."

"The mountains teach us some thing, maybe."

"Something of their greatness, which we should all do well to learn. But have you never lived in a town?"

"A man of my sort _exists_ in a town; he lives in the mountains." With this diplomatic answer the tall figure swung round a corner formed by a boulder, and Sylvia uttered an exclamation of surprise. The "hut" of which the chamois-hunter had spoken was revealed by the turn, and it was of an original and picturesque description. Instead of the humble erection of stones and wood which she had expected, the rocky side of the mountain had been utilized to afford her sons a shelter.

A doorway, and large square panes for windows, had been made in the red-veined, purplish-brown porphyry; while a heavy slab of oak (now standing ajar), and wooden frames, glittering with jewel-like bottle-glass, protected the rooms within from storm or cold.

Even had the Princess been ignorant of her host's identity she would have been wise enough to know that this was no _Sennhutte_, or common abode of peasants who hunt the chamois for a precarious living. The work of hewing out in the solid rock such a habitation as this must alone have cost more than most chamois-hunters could save in a lifetime; but after her first ejaculation she expressed no further amazement, only admiration.

The man stood aside that she might pass into the outer room, and, though she was not invited to further exploration, she could see by the several doors cut in the walls that this was not the sole accommodation which the curious house could boast.

On the stone floor rugs of deer and chamois skin were spread; in a rack of oak, ornamented with splendid antlers and studded with the sharp, pointed horns of the chamois, were suspended guns of modern make and brightly polished knives. The table in the middle of the room had been carved with exceeding skill; and the half-dozen chairs were oddly fashioned of stags antlers, formed to hold fur-cushioned, wooden seats. A carved dresser of black oak held a store of the brightly coloured china made by the peasants in the valley below, eked out with platters and tankards of old pewter; and in the great fireplace a gipsy kettle was suspended over a red bed of fragrant pine-wood embers.

"This is a place fit for a king--or even an emperor," Sylvia said, with demure graciousness, when the bare-kneed young man had offered her a seat and crossed the room to open the closed cupboard under the dresser. He was stooping as she spoke, but at her last words looked quickly round over his shoulder.

"We peasants are not afraid of a little work when it is for our own comfort," he responded, "And most of the things you see are homemade during the long winters."

"Then you are all very clever. But, tell me, has the Emperor ever been your guest? I have read--let me see, could it have been in a guide-book, or perhaps in some society paper?--that he comes occasionally to the mountains here."

"Oh yes; the Kaiser has been at this hut--once, twice, perhaps." Her host laid a loaf of black bread, a cut cheese, and a knuckle of ham on the table. He then glanced at his guest, expecting her to come forward; but she sat still on her throne of antlers, her little feet in their strong mountain boots, daintily crossed under the short tweed skirt.

"I hear your Kaiser is a good chamois-hunter," she leisurely remarked. "But that, perhaps, is only the flattery which makes the atmosphere of kings. No doubt, you could give him many points in chamois-hunting?"

The young man smiled. "The Emperor is not a bad shot," he returned.

"For an amateur. But you are a professional. I wager now that you would not change places with the Emperor?"

How the chamois-hunter laughed and showed his white teeth! There were those in the towns he scorned, who would have been astonished at his levity.

"Change places with the Emperor? Not--unless I were obliged, _gna' Fräulein_. Not _now_, at all events," with a meaning bow and glance.

"Thank you. You are quite a courtier. One of the things they say of him in England is that he dislikes women. But perhaps he does not understand them?"

"Indeed, lady? I had not heard that they were so difficult of comprehension."

"Ah, that shows how little you chamois-hunters know them. Why, we can't even understand ourselves! Though--a very odd thing--we have no difficulty in reading one another, and knowing all each other's faults."

"That would seem to say a man should get a woman to choose his wife for him."

"I'm not so sure. Yet the Emperor, we hear, will let his Chancellor choose his."

"Ah! Were you told this also in England?"

"Yes. For the gossip is that she's an English Princess. Now, what is the good of being an Emperor if he can't even pick out a wife to please himself?"

"I know little about such high matters, _gna' Fräulein_. But I fancied that Royal folk chose wives to please the people rather than themselves. If the lady be of good blood, virtuous, of the right religion, and pleasant to look at, why--those are the principal things, I suppose."

"So should I not suppose, if I were a man--and an emperor. I should want to fall in love."

"Safer not; he might fall in love with the wrong woman." And the chamois-hunter looked with a certain intentness into his guest's deep eyes.

She flushed under the gaze, and answered at random, "I doubt it he _could_ fall in love. A man who would let his Chancellor choose! He can have no heart at all."

"He has perhaps found other things more important in life than women."

"Chamois, for instance. _You_ would sympathize there."

"Chamois give good sport. They are hard to find; hard to hit when you have found them."

"So are the best types of women. Those who, like the chamois (and the plant I spoke of), live only in high places. Oh, for the sake of my sex, I hope that one day your Emperor will be forced to change his mind--that a _woman_ will make him change it!"

"Perhaps a woman has--already."

Sylvia grew pale. Was she too late? Or was this a hidden compliment which the chamois-hunter did not guess she had the clue to understand? She could not answer. The silence grew electrical, and he broke it with some slight confusion. "It is a pity the Kaiser cannot hear you. He might be converted to your more English views."

"Or he might clap me into prison for _lèse-majesté_."

"He would not do that, _gna' Fräulein_--if he's anything like me."

"Which is just what he is--in appearance, I mean, judging by his pictures."

"You have seen his pictures?"

"Oh, yes--you are really rather like him, only browner and bigger, perhaps. Yet I am glad that you are a chamois-hunter and not an emperor--as glad as _you_ can be."

"Will you tell me why, lady?"

"Oh, for one reason because I could not ask him to do what I'm going to ask of you. You have laid the bread and ham ready, but you forgot to cut it."

"A thousand pardons. Our conversation has sent my wits wool-gathering. My mind should have been on my manners, instead of such far-off things as emperors." He began hewing at the black loaf as if it were an enemy to be conquered. And there were few in Rhaetia who had ever seen those dark eyes so bright.

"I like ham and bread cut thin, if you please," said Sylvia. "There-- that is better. I will sit here, if you will bring the things to me. You are very kind--and I find that I am tired."

"A draught of our Rhaetian beer will put better heart into you, it may be," suggested the hunter, taking up the plate of bread and meat he had cut, placing it in her hand, and returning to draw a tankard of foaming amber liquid from a quaint hogshead in a corner.

But Sylvia waved the _krug_ away with a smile and a pretty gesture. "My head has proved to be not strong enough for your mountains; I'm sure it isn't strong enough for your beer. Have you some cold water?"

The hunter of chamois laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "Our water here is fit only for the outside of the body," he explained. "To us, that is no deprivation, as we are true Rhaetians for our beer. But on your account I am sorry."

"Perhaps you have milk?" asked Sylvia. "I could scarcely count the cows, they were so many as I came up the mountain."

"There are plenty of cows about," answered the young man dubiously. "But if I fetch one, can you milk it?"

"Pray, good friend, fetch the cow and milk the cow," cried Sylvia. "And here is a trifle to reward all your kindness and trouble."

She would not see the blood rising in a red tide to the brown forehead, but bent her eyes upon her hand, from which she slowly withdrew a ring. It fitted tightly, for it was years since she had had it made, before the little fingers had finished growing. And when she had pulled off the circlet of gold, she held it up alluringly.

"I will do my best to get you the milk," said the hunter, "but we mountain men don't take payment from our guests."

"Here is no _payment_; only something to help you remember the first woman who, as you say, has ever entered this door. Please come at least and look."

The hunter drew near and took the proffered ornament. "The crest of Rhaetia!" he exclaimed, as his eyes fell upon a shield of black and green enamel, set with tiny, sparkling brilliants.

"Press a spring at the left side," directed the giver, a faint tremor in her voice; "and when you have seen the secret it will show, you may guess why I spoke at first of the ring as a reward, and why you can't loyally refuse to accept it."

The brown forefinger found a pin's point prominence of gold, and pressing, the shield flew up to reveal a miniature of Emperor Maximilian.

"You are surprised?" said Sylvia.

"I am surprised, because I understood that you thought poorly of our Kaiser."

"_Poorly_. What gave you that impression?"

"Why, you scorned his opinion of women."

"Who am I to scorn an emperor's opinion, even on a matter he would consider so unimportant? I confess we English girls are interested in your Maximilian, if only because we would be charitably minded and teach him better. But as for the ring they sell such things in Wandeck and many of the towns I have been visiting in Rhaetia. Did you not know that?"

"No, lady, I did not know it."

Nor, as a plain matter of fact, did Sylvia. She had first acted on impulse, and then spoken at random. The ring had been made to order from a design of her own, while she herself had painted the tiny miniature on ivory. But she had been urged by a sudden desire to see him lift the jewelled shield; and the time was not yet ripe for confessions. "Keep the trinket for your Kaiser's sake," she said.

"May I not keep it for yours as well?"

"Yes--if you bring me the milk."

The chamois-hunter caught up a gaudy jug, and, without further words, strode out. When he had gone, the Princess rose and lifting the knife he had used to slice the bread and ham, she kissed the handle on the place where his brown fingers had grasped "You are a very silly girl, my dear," she said. "But oh! how you do love him! And what an exquisite hour you are having!"

For ten minutes she sat alone; then the door was flung open and her host returned, no longer with the gay air that had sat like a new cloak upon him, but hot and sulky, the jug in his hand empty still.

"I could not milk the cow," he admitted shortly. "I chased one brute and then another; one I caught, but something was wrong with the abominable beast, for no milk would she give me."

"Pray don't mind," Sylvia soothed him, hiding laughter. "You were kind to try. Luckily you're not the Kaiser, who prides himself on doing all things. I wonder, now, if _he_ could milk a cow?"

"He should learn, if not," broke out the chamois-hunter. "There's no telling, it seems, when one may want the strangest accomplishments, and be shamed for lack of them."

"No, not shamed," protested Sylvia. "I am no longer thirsty, and you have been so good. See; while you were gone, I ate the bread-and-ham, and never did any meal taste better. Now, you will have many things to do; I've trespassed too long; and, besides, I have a friend waiting. Will you tell me by what name I shall remember you when I recall this day?"

"They named me--for the Kaiser."

"Oh, then I shall call you Max. _Max_! What a nice name! I like it, I think, as well as any I have ever heard. Will you shake hands for good-bye?"

The strong hand came out eagerly. "But it is not good-bye, _gna' Fräulein_. You must let me help you back to the path and down the mountain."

"I wished, but dared not ask that of you, lest--like your namesake-- you were a hater of women.

"That is too hard a word, even for an emperor, lady. While as for me-- well, if I ever said to myself, 'Women are not much good to men as their companions', I'm ready to unsay it."

"Then you shall come with me, and we'll look for the _Edelmann_, though I've wasted too much time over my own pleasure. And you shall help me; and you shall help my friend, who is so strong-minded that she will perhaps make you think even better of our sex. And you shall be our guide down to Heiligengelt, where we are staying at the inn. And you shall, if you will, carry our cloaks and rücksacks, which seem so heavy to us, but will be nothing for your strong shoulders."

The face of the chamois-hunter expressed such mirthful appreciation of her commands, that Sylvia turned her head away, lest he should guess she held a key to the inner situation. His willingness to become a beast of burden at the service of the English lady whom he had seen, and her whom he had yet to see, was indubitably genuine. For the next few hours he was free, it seemed--this namesake of the Emperor. He had been out before dawn, and had had good luck. Later, he had returned to the hut for a meal and rest, while his friends went down to the village on business. But he had meant all along to join them sooner or later; and he hoped that he might atone by his assistance for his failure with the cow.

"Do not go away thinking that we Rhaetians, Royal or peasant, are so cold of heart as you have fancied, _gna' Fräulein_," he said at last, when their _tête-à-tête_ ended with a sight of Miss M'Pherson's distant profile. "The torrent of our blood may sleep for a season under ice, but when the spring comes, and the ice is broken, then the torrent gushes forth more hotly because it has not spent its strength before."

"I shall remember that," said Sylvia, "for--my journal of Rhaetia."

It was at this moment that the distant profile became a full face, with telescopic eye-glasses, gazing starward.

* * * * *

"I thought you were never coming," exclaimed Miss M'Pherson; then stopped abruptly at the sight of the young man with bare knees.

"Perhaps I never should, had it not been for the help of this good friend," responded Sylvia; "for I got myself into unexpected difficulties up there. His name is Max, and he is a monarch of-- chamois-hunters. Give him your rücksack and cape, dear Miss Collinson; Max is kind enough to be our guide down the mountain, as you seemed so timid about making the descent with me alone."

Miss M'Pherson, a staunch Royalist and firm believer in the divine right of kings, grew crimson as to nose and ears--a mute protest against this mischievous command. What a thing to have happened! Here was her adored young Princess leading the Imperial Eagle (disguised, indeed, yet Royal withal) a captive in chains. What an achievement even for all-conquering beauty, within the space of one short hour--short for so great a conquest, though it had appeared long enough in waiting. Such triumph was no more than a tribute due to that Rose-of-all-the-World, Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald, and must have been given her by the patron saint of lovers. But that Jane M'Pherson, daughter of a plain country parson of Dumbartonshire, should fling upon the sacred shoulders of an emperor her brown canvas rücksack, stuffed with eggs and bread and cheese; her golf-cape, with goloshes in the pocket, was too monstrous. Her whole nature revolted against the suggestion of such _lêse-majesté_.

"Pray, dearest P--Mary," the unhappy lady stammered, "don't ask me to-- really these things of mine are nothing. I can hardly feel their weight."

"All the better for our friend Max, since he is to carry them," came the calm response. "Help her to undo the buckles, please, Max. Now you may have the pleasure of giving her your arm."

Chapter IV

Max Versus Maximilian

"ACH Himmel!" exclaimed Frau Johann. And "Ach Himmel!" she exclaimed again, with frantic uplifting of the hands.

The Grand Duchess turned pale, for the landlady had suddenly exhibited these signs of emotion while passing a window of the private sitting-room. It was the hour for afternoon tea in England, for afternoon coffee in Rhaetia, and already the Princess's mother had begun to look nervously for the climbers return. Naturally, at Frau Johann's outburst of excitement, her imagination pictured disaster.

"What--oh, what can you see?" she implored in piercing accents; but for once the courtesy due to a guest was forgotten, and Frau Johann fled without giving an answer.

Half paralyzed with apprehension, her mind conjuring some sight of terror, the Grand Duchess tottered to the window. Was there--yes, there was a procession. Oh, horror! They were perhaps bringing Sylvia down from the mountain, dead, her beautiful face crushed out of recognition. Yet, no--there was Sylvia herself, the central figure in that procession. A peasant, loaded with cloaks and rücksacks, headed the band, while Sylvia and Miss M'Pherson followed after.

The anxious mother had thrown wide the window, but as she was about to attract the truants attention with an impromptu speech of welcome, the words were arrested on her lips. What was the matter with Frau Johann?

The old woman had popped out of the door like a Jack out of his box, sprung to the much-loaded peasant, and, almost rudely elbowing Miss M'Pherson aside, was distractedly tearing at the bundle of cloaks and rücksacks. Her inarticulate groans ascended to the Grand Duchess at the window, adding to the lady's increased bewilderment.

"What has the man been doing?" the Grand Duchess demanded. But nobody answered, because nobody heard.

"Pray let him carry our thing indoors," Sylvia was insisting, while the peasant stood among the three women, apparently a prey to conflicting emotions. To the Grand Duchess, as she regarded the strange scene through her lorgnette, it seemed that his dark face expressed a mingling amusement, annoyance, and embarrassment. He looked like a man who had somehow placed himself in a false position, and was torn betwixt a desire to laugh and to fly into a rage. He frowned haughtily at Frau Johann, smiled at the two ladies, dividing his energies between secret gestures (which he evidently intended for the eye of the landlady alone) and endeavours to unburden himself, in his own time and way, of the load he carried.

More and more did the Grand Duchess wonder what was going on. Why did this man not speak out what he had to say? Why did Frau Johann at first seek to seize the things which he had on his back, then suddenly shrink away as if in fear, leaving the brown-faced peasant to his own devices? How had he contrived, with a look, to intimidate that brave honest woman?

There was mystery here, thought the Grand Duchess; and she remembered dark tales of brigands, dreaded by all the country-folk, yet protected for very fear. She was painfully near-sighted, but by constant application of the lorgnette she arrived at a logical conclusion.

Frau Johann had doubtless been frightened at seeing her guests coming down the mountain in such evil company. She had rushed to their succour, trying to make sure that their belongings had not been tampered with. But those great brown eyes under the rakish hat had glared a secret warning, and Frau Johann had despairingly abandoned her championship of the ladies.

In the adjoining sitting-room, the Grand Duchess had reason to know, were at that moment assembled some or all of the mysterious gentlemen stopping at the inn. They had probably been attracted to their window by the voices below; and the Grand Duchess courageously resolved that, at the slightest sign of impudence on the part of the luggage-carrier, these noblemen should be promptly summoned by her to the rescue.

Her anxiety was even slightly allayed at this point in her reflections by the thought (she had not quite outgrown an inmate love of romance) that the Emperor himself might rush to the succour of beauty in distress. His friends were in the next room, having come down from the mountains at noon, and there seemed little doubt that he was among them. If he had not already looked out from the window, and been astonished at sight of so much loveliness, the Grand Duchess decided, upon an inspiration, that he must be induced to do so. She would help on Sylvia's cause and win her gratitude when the true story of this day should be told.

In a penetrating voice, which could not fail to reach the ears of those in the room adjoining hers, or the ears of the actors in the scene below, she adjured her daughter in English. This language was safest, she considered, as the desperado with the rücksacks could not understand and resent her criticism, while the flower of Rhaetian chivalry next door would comprehend both the words and the necessity for action.

"Mary!" she shrieked, loyally remembering in her excitement the part she was playing. "Mary, where did you pick up that alarming-looking ruffian? I believe he intends to keep your rücksacks. Is there no man-servant about the place whom Frau Johann can call to her assistance?"

All four of the actors glanced up, aware for the first time of an audience. Had the Grand Duchess been less near-sighted, less agitated, she might have been surprised at the varying yet vivid expressions of the faces. But she saw only that the tall, dark-faced peasant, who had so glared at poor Frau Johann, was throwing off his burdens with sudden haste and roughness.

"I do hope he hasn't stolen anything," said the Grand Duchess. "Better not let him go until you have looked into your rücksacks. That silver drinking-cup you _would_ take up----"

She paused, not so much in obedience to Sylvia's quick reply, as in amazement at Frau Johann's renewed antics. Was it possible that the landlady understood more English than her guests supposed, and feared lest the man with the bare knees--perhaps equally well-informed--might seek immediate revenge? Those bare knees alone were evidence against his character in the eyes of the Grand Duchess. They imparted a brazen, desperate air; and a man who cultivated so long a space between stockings and trousers might easily be capable of any crime.

"Oh, mother, you are very much mistaken. This excellent young man is a great friend of mine, and has saved my life," Sylvia was protesting; and her words began at length to penetrate the ears of the Grand Duchess. Overwhelmed by their full import, she suffered a sudden revulsion of feeling, which caused her to catch at the window-curtains for support.

"Saved your life!" she echoed. "Then you have been in danger. Thank heaven, the young man is not likely to know English, or I should not soon forgive myself. Here is my purse. Give it to him, and come indoors at once. You really look ready to faint."

So speaking, she snatched from a table close by her purse, containing ten or twelve pounds in Rhaetian money; but before she could accomplish her dramatic purpose, flinging the guerdon literally at the misjudged hero's feet, Sylvia prevented her with an imploring gesture.

"He will take no reward for what he has done save our thanks, and those I give him now, for the second time," cried the girl. She then turned to the man, and made him a present of her hand, over which he bowed with the air of a courtier rather than the rough manner of a peasant. The Grand Duchess still hoped that the Emperor might be at the window, as really it was a pretty sight, and presented a pleasing phase of Sylvia's character.

She eagerly awaited her daughter's approach, and having lingered to watch with impatience the rather ceremonious parting, she hastened to the door of the sitting-room to welcome the travellers as they came upstairs.

"My darling, who do you think was listening and looking from the window next ours?" she breathlessly inquired, when she had embraced her recovered treasure for the secret of the adjoining room was too great to keep. "You can't guess? I'm surprised at that, since you are not ignorant of a certain person's nearness. Why, who but the Emperor himself?"

"Then he must have an astral body--a _Doppelgänger_," said Sylvia, "since he has been with me all day, and that was he to whom you offered your purse."

The Grand Duchess sat down; not so much because she desired to assume the sitting position as because she experienced a sudden weakening of the knees. For a moment she was unable to speculate: but a poignant thought passed through her brain. "Heavens! what have I done? And it may be that one day he will become my son-in-law."

Meanwhile, Frau Johann--a strangely subdued Frau Johann--had droopingly followed the chamois-hunter into the house.

"My friend, you must learn not to lose your head," said he, when she had timidly joined him in the otherwise deserted hall.

"Oh, but Your Majesty--"

"How many times must I remind you that His Majesty remains in Salzbrück or some other of his residences when I am at Heiligengelt? If you cannot remember, I must look for chamois elsewhere than on the Weisshorn."

"I will not forget again, Your--I mean, I will do my best. Yet never before have I been so tried. To see your noble and high-born shoulders loaded down as if--as if you had been but a common _Gepäckträger_ instead of----"

"A chamois-hunter? Don't distress yourself my friend. I have had a very good day's sport."

"It has given me a weakness of the heart, Your--sir. How can I again order myself civilly to those ladies, who----"

"Who have afforded peasant Max a few amusing hours. Be more civil than ever, for my sake, friend. And, by the way, do you happen to know the names of the ladies? That one of them is Miss Collison, I have heard; but the others----"

"They are mother and daughter, sir. The elder, who spoke, in her ignorance, such treasonable things from the window, is called by the Miss Collinson 'Lady de Courcy'. The younger--the beautiful one--is also a miss; and I think her name is Mary. They talk together in English, and though I know few words of that language, I have heard 'London' mentioned not once, but many times between them. Besides, it is painted in big black letters on their boxes."

"You did not expect them here?"

"Oh, no, sir. Had any one written at this season, when I am honoured by your presence, I should have answered that we were full, or the house closed--or any excuse which occurred to me. But no strangers have ever remained in Heiligengelt, or arrived, so late; and I was taken unawares when my son Alois drove them up last night. They are here but for a few days, on their way to Salzbrück, and so home, the pretty Miss de Courcy said; and I thought----"

"You did quite right, Frau Johann. Has my messenger come with letters?"

"Yes, Your--yes, sir; just now also a telegram was brought up by another messenger, who came in a great hurry, and has but lately gone." The chamois-hunter shrugged his shoulders and gave vent to an impatient sigh. "It is too much to expect that I should be left in peace for a single day, even here," he muttered as he moved toward the stairs.

To reach Frau Johann's best sitting-room (selfishly occupied, according to one opinion, by the gentlemen absent all day upon the mountains) he was obliged to pass a door through which issued unusual sounds. Involuntary he paused. Some one was striking the preliminary chords of a _volkslied_ on his favourite instrument, a Rhaetian improvement upon the zither. As he lingered, listening, a voice began to sing--such a voice! Softly seductive as the purling of a brook through a meadow; rich as the deepest notes of a nightingale in its first passion for the moon.

The song was the heartbroken cry of an old Rhaetian peasant, who, lying near death in a strange land, longs for the sunrise light on the mountain-tops at home, more earnestly than for heaven.

The listener did not move until the voice had died into silence. He knew, though he could not see, who the singer had been. It was impossible for the fat lady at the window, or the thin lady with the Baedeker, to own a voice like that. Only one there was who could so exhale her soul in the perfume of sound. To his fancy, it was like hearing the fragrance of a lily breathed aloud. In reality, it was Sylvia, with childish vanity, showing off her prettiest accomplishment, in order that the impression she had made might be deepened.

The man outside the door had heard many golden voices--golden in all senses of the word--but never before one which so strangely stirred his spirit, stirred it with a pain that was bitter sweet and a vague yearning for something he had never known. If he had been asked what was the thing for which he sighed, he could not, if he would, have told; for a man cannot explain that inner part of himself which he has never even tried to understand.

Before he had thought of moving, the beautiful voice, no longer plaintive, but swelling to triumphant brilliancy, broke into the national anthem of Rhaetia warlike, calling her sons to face death singing, in her defense. It was as if a rainbow shower of diamonds had been flung into the sunshine, and the heart of the man who stood at the head of his nation thrilled with the response that never failed.

"She is an Englishwoman, yet she sings the Rhaetian music as I have never known a Rhaetian girl sing it," he told himself, slowly passing on to his own door. "She is a new type of woman to me. A pity that she is not a Princess, or else--that Maximilian and Max the chamois-hunter are not two. Still, in such a case, the chamois-hunter would be no match for Miss de Courcy of London, so the weights would balance in the scales as unevenly as now."

He smiled, and sighed, and shrugged his shoulders once again. Then he opened the door of his sitting-room, to forget, among certain documents which urged the importance of immediate return to duty, the difference between Max and Maximilian, the difference between women and women.

"Good-bye to the mountains, to-morrow morning," he said to his chosen comrades. "Hey for work and Salzbrück again!"

_She_ was going to Salzbrück in a few days, according to Frau Johann. But Salzbrück was not Heiligengelt, and Maximilian the Emperor was not, at his palace, in the way of meeting tourists. It was good-bye to Miss de Courcy as well as to the mountains.

"She'll never know to whom she gave her ring," he thought, with the dense innocence of a man who has studied all books save woman's looks. "And I'll never know who gives her a plain gold one for the finger on which she once wore this."

But in the next room, divided from him by a single wall, sat Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald.

"When we meet again at Salzbrück, he must never dream that I _knew_ all the time," she was saying to herself. "Some day I shall long to confess. But I could only confess to a man who excused, because he loved me. And suppose that day should never come?"

Chapter V

Not Down In The Programme

LETTERS of introduction for Lady de Courcy and her daughter to those best worth knowing among Rhaetia's _haute noblesse_ were a part of the "plan" concocted in the Richmond garden--that plan which the Grand Duchess had seen and dreaded in Sylvia's shining eyes.

The widow of the Hereditary Grand Duke of Eltzburg-Neuwald was reported in the papers to be travelling with the Princess Sylvia in Canada and the United States. Fortunately for the plot, the elder lady had spent so many years in retirement in England, and had, even in her youth, met so few Rhaetians, that there was little fear of any embarrassing _contretemps_. Her objections to the unconventional attempt to win a lover, instead of resting content with a mere husband, were based on other grounds; Sylvia had overcome them, nevertheless; and, in the end, the Grand Duchess had proved not only docile but positively fertile in expedient. She it was who suggested, since the adoption of borrowed plumes was a necessity, that de Courcy, her mother's maiden name, should be chosen.

One friend only had been taken into Sylvia's fullest confidence, and that friend was a lady whose husband had been British Ambassador at the Rhaetian Court. She knew "everybody who was anybody" there, and had entered with a fearful joy into the spirit of the escapade. Exactly how it was to end she did not see; but so far as she was concerned, that was a detail; and she had written for Lady de Courcy all the letters needful as an open sesame to the Court.

Sylvia did not wish to hurry away from Heiligengelt to Salzbrück, even though the inn was empty (save for her own small party) two days after their arrival. They had met: the rest lay on the knees of the gods. And since the best sitting-room was now at the ladies disposal, it was but fair to Frau Johann that they should remain for a time, if only to make use of it. When they left at last, after a stay of a week, it was to go to Salzbrück for the great festivities which were to mark the Emperor's thirty-first birthday, an event enhanced in national importance by the fact that the tenth anniversary of his succession would fall on the same date. On the day of the journey, the Grand Duchess had a headache and was cross.

"I don't see what you've accomplished so far by this mad freak," she said fretfully to her daughter, in the train which carried them away from Pitzbühel. "We've been perched on a mountain-top, like the Ark on Ararat, for a week, our marrow freezing in our bones; and, after all, what have we to show for it--unless an incipient influenza?"

Sylvia had nothing to show for it; at least, nothing that she meant to show; but in a little scented silk bag which nestled against her heart lay a tiny folded piece of blotting-paper. If you looked at its reflection in a mirror, you saw, written twice over, in a firm, opinionated hand, the name, "Mary de Courcy." And Sylvia had found it in a book after Frau Johann had made the best sitting-room ready for new occupants. Therefore she loved Heiligengelt; therefore she thought with silent satisfaction of her visit there.

To learn her full name he must have made inquiries, for Miss M'Pherson had not uttered it on their progress down the mountain. It had been in his thoughts, or he would not have committed it to paper in a moment of idle dreaming. Through all her life Sylvia had known the want of money, but now she would not have taken a thousand pounds for the contents of the silken bag.

Hohenburg is the family name of Rhaetia's emperors; therefore everything in Salzbrück that can be Hohenburg is Hohenburg; and it was at the Hohenburgerhof, Salzbrück's grandest hotel, that a suite of rooms had been hired for Lady de Courcy's party.

They had broken the journey at Wandeck; and Sylvia had so timed it that they should arrive in Salzbrück an hour before the first of the ceremonies on the birthday eve--the unveiling by the Kaiser of the great national statue of Rhaetia in the Maximilian Platz, exactly in front of the Hohenburgerhof. At the station they were told by the driver of their selected droschky that he would not be able to take the high, well-born ladies to the main door of the Hohenburgerhof, for the passage of carriages was forbidden in the Maximilian Platz, where the crowd had been assembling since dawn for the ceremony; and that he would be compelled to deposit them and their luggage at a side entrance. As they left the station, from far away came a burst of martial music, a military band playing the national air which the chamois-hunter had heard the English girl singing at Heiligengelt. The shops were closed for the day; from nearly every window hung a flag or banner, while the old narrow streets and the broad new streets were festooned with bunting, wreaths of evergreen, and autumn flowers. Prosperous citizens in their best, peasants in gay holiday attire, streamed toward the Maximilian Platz. It seemed to Sylvia that the air tingled with expectation; she thought that she must have felt the magnetic thrill in it, even if she had shut her eyes and ears.

"We shall be in time. We shall see the ceremony from our windows," she excitedly said.

But at the hotel she encountered a keen disappointment. With many apologies the landlord explained that he had done his best for the ladies when he received their letter a week before, and that he had allotted them a good suite, with balconies, overlooking the river at the back of the house--the situation considered preferable on ordinary occasions. But, as to rooms in the front, it was impossible; they had all been taken more than six weeks in advance; one American gentleman was paying a thousand gulden for an hour's use of a small balcony leading off the drawing-room.

Sylvia was pale with disappointment. "I will go down into the crowd and take my chance," she said to her mother when they had been shown into the handsome rooms, so satisfactory in everything but situation.

"My dear--impossible," exclaimed the Grand Duchess. "I could not think of allowing it. Only fancy what a crush there will be--people trampling on each other for places. You could see nothing."

"But I couldn't bear to stay shut up here," pleaded Sylvia, "while that music plays and the crowds shout themselves hoarse for the Emperor. Something inside me seems to say that I must be there. And Miss M'Pherson and I will take care of each other."

Somehow--she hardly knew how--consent was as usual wrung from the Grand Duchess's reluctance, the only stipulation being that Sylvia and her chaperon should keep close to the hotel, returning at once if they found themselves in danger of being borne away by the crowd.

Their rooms were on the first floor, and the girl hurried down the broad flight of marble stairs, without sending for the lift, Miss M'Pherson following upon her heels.

They could not get out by the front door, for people had paid for places there, and would not yield an inch even for a moment; while the two or three steps below and the pavement in front were closely blocked.

Matters began to look hopeless, but Sylvia would not yet be daunted. They tried the wide entrance, and found it free, the street into which it led being comparatively empty; but beyond, where it joined the great open square of the Maximilian Platz, there was a solid wall of human beings.

"We might as well go back," said Miss M'Pherson, who had not Sylvia's keenness for the undertaking. She was comfortably fatigued after the journey, and would rather have had a cup of tea than see fifty emperors unveil as many statues.

"Look at that man just ahead," whispered the Princess; "_he_ doesn't mean to go back. Let us keep close behind him, and see what he is going to do. He has the air of one who has made up his mind to get something or do something, which he won't easily give up."

Miss M'Pherson brought a critical gaze to bear upon the person indicated. He was striding rapidly along, a few yards in advance, only his back being visible; but it was a singularly determined back; and it was clad in a gray and crimson uniform. On his head he wore a cocked hat, adorned with an eagle's feather, fastened by a gaudy jewel. As Miss M'Pherson observed these details, she noted half unconsciously that the man's neck between the collar of his coat and the sleek black hair was yellow-white as old parchment.

"He looks like an official of some sort," she remarked. "Maybe the crowd will open to let him through."

"So I was thinking," hopefully responded Sylvia. "And when the crowd opens for him, if we're clever, it may open for us too. He's a hateful-looking man, and I have taken a dislike to him without a sight of his face; but we must use him as if he were a Cairene cyce."

"He really _is_ going through!" exclaimed Miss M'Pherson.

They were close upon their unconscious pioneer now; and as--in peremptory tones--he informed the human wall that it must divide to let him pass, because he had come with a special message to the Lord Chancellor from the Burgomaster, the Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald could have laid her hands upon the gray shoulders, epauletted with red.

The wall obeyed, evidently recognizing the authority of his uniform. "It must be the secretary of Herr Hermann, the Burgomaster," Sylvia heard one man murmur knowingly to another. "Something of importance has, perhaps, been forgotten, or special news has been received and must be reported."

Good-naturedly the crowd gave way for the new comer; and, to Sylvia's joy, she was sucked into the whirlpool in his wake. Near the front, people would have stopped her if they could, knowing that she, at least, had no official right of entrance; but at the critical instant the blue-and-silver uniformed band of Rhaetia's crack regiment, the "Kaiser's Own," struck up an air which told them the Emperor was approaching. Angry ones were content with keeping out the tall, thin English spinster in tweed, hustling and pushing her into the background, when she would shrilly have protested in her native tongue that "really, _really_ she _must_ be allowed to pass with her friend!"

The man who had announced his mission from the Burgomaster must have felt that someone pressed after him with particularity, for, as he reached the front rank on the densely packed pavement, he wheeled sharply round. Sylvia, her little chin almost resting on his shoulder, met his gaze, shrinking away from the breath that swept hot across her cheek.

"Just the face I gave his back credit for," she thought ungratefully. "Sly and cruel, brutal, too--and, how curiously pale!"

A pair of black eyes, small, glassy, with a peculiar flatness of the cornea, had aimed at her a glance of suspicion; and she seemed still to feel their penetrating stare, when the face was turned away again. Having obtained his desire--a position in the front rank of the spectators, and incidentally a place for Sylvia too--the man in gray and red proceeded to take from his breast a roll of parchment, tied with narrow ribbon and sealed with a crimson seal.

Sylvia, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, had just time to wonder if the fellow were going to read some proclamation, when a great cheer arose from thousands of throats; men waved their hats; peasant women held up their children, while ladies threw roses from the decorated balconies. A white figure on a white charger came riding into the square, under the gay-coloured triumphal arch of flags and flowers.

Others followed: men in rich dark uniforms, on coal-black horses; yet Sylvia saw only one, glittering white from head to foot, like hoar-frost in sunlight. Under the shining helmet of steel, the earnest face looked clear-cut as cameo. To the crowd he was the Kaiser--a fine, popular, clever young man, who ruled his country well, and, above all provided many a pleasing spectacle; to the girl he was an ideal St. George, strong and brave to slay modern dragons, right all crying wrongs.

How stately and splendid he looked, controlling the white charger, with its clanking silver trappings; how the jewelled orders on his breast sparkled, as he saluted his enthusiastic subjects!

"What if he should never love me?" Sylvia thought, as she often thought, with a sharp, jealous spasm of the heart.

Now he was vaulting from his horse, while men in uniforms, and men with ribbons and decorations, came forward, bowing, to receive him. The ceremony of unveiling the statue of Rhaetia, executed by one of the world's most famous sculptors, was about to begin.

To reach the great crimson-draped platform on which he was presently to take his stand, the Emperor must pass within a few yards of Sylvia. His eyes travelled over the brightly coloured throng; what if they should fall upon her? The girl's heart was in her throat; she could feel it beating there, and for a moment the tall white figure was lost in a mist that rose before her eyes.

She had forgotten how she came there--forgotten the stranger in gray and red to whom she owed her great good fortune; when suddenly, while the mist was at its thickest, she grew conscious of the man's presence. So near her he stood, that a quick start, a gathering of his muscles for a spring, flashed like a message by telegraph through her own body. The mist clouding her senses was burnt up in the flame of a strange enlightenment--a clarity of vision which showed not only the hero of the day, the crowd, and the man beside her, but the guilty soul of that man as well.

"He is going to kill the Emperor!"

It was as if a voice hissed the words into her ears; she knew now why she had struggled to win this place, why she had succeeded, what she had to do--or die in failing to do.

The Emperor was not half a dozen yards away. She alone had felt that murderous thrilling, heard that panting breath; she alone guessed what the roll of parchment hid.

While the crowd shouted for "Unser Max!" a figure, gray and red, leapt toward the white one, with clenched hand upraised, something sharp and bright catching the sun in a streak of steely light as it rose and fell.

Maximilian saw, yet not in time to swerve aside. The blade swooped hawk-like, scenting blood. A second's fraction, and it would have drunk deep--a Royal draught; but an arm struck it up and a girl was sobbing; while for her the heavens above and the earth below merged together in whirling chaos.

* * * * *

The man in red and gray was like a fox among the hounds; and the crowd, in the madness of sudden rage, would have rent him limb from limb, despite the cordon of police that quickly gathered round him; but the Emperor's ringing voice commanded instant obedience. Only those in the front ranks, or the windows above, had seen the attack and the unknown girl's intervention; yet the shouts of those who had witnessed the furious rush forward, the shrieks of the ladies on the balconies, flashed the news through the Maximilian Platz that there had been an attempt on the Kaiser's life. That little yellow man in the Burgomaster's red and gray--he who had pushed past everybody on the pretense of official business--he it was who had done the deed. Kill him--kill him!--trample him down, tear out the vile heart of him and fling it to the dogs! What of the police? This is not their affair, but the people's--the people who love "Unser Max" and would die for the Kaiser. Away with the police!--but no--silence, silence for the Kaiser. What is he saying? "My people shall not be murderers; let the law deal with the madman--it is my command. Three cheers for the lady to whom your Kaiser owes his life, and then the ceremonies shall go on!"

Three cheers? Three times three, and split the skies with shouts for the Kaiser. How the women cry, when they ought to be laughing! A chance now for the police to hurry the limp thing in gray and red away out of sight and off to prison, for every one turns to the Emperor, just saved from the assassin's knife. He has sprung up the steps of the great crimson-covered platform, half carrying, half leading, a beautiful pale girl, who stifles her hysterical sobbing and tries to hide the blood that drips from a wound in her arm. Who is she? Has any one seen her before? God grant it is a Rhaetian who has had the good fortune and courage to save the Emperor's life! Yet what does it matter? There he stands, well and unhurt, holding her by his side, that all the people may see her and give thanks. She is worthy to be a goddess in their eyes; the radiance of her beauty--as for a few seconds she stands gazing up into his face, then hiding hers between trembling hands--seems supernatural. It is only for a moment that they see her, as the shouts of praise to heaven, and the cheers for Maximilian and the stranger who saved him, drown the music for which a signal has been given; for the programme of the day is to be finished and the episode to be set aside.

"God keep our Kaiser!" the band plays; and as if the order of events had been undisturbed, the ceremony of unveiling the statue goes on.

Chapter VI

The Honours Of The Day

IT IS those in the thick of battle who can afterward tell least about it, and to the Princess those five potent moments--the most tremendous, the most vital of her life--were in memory like a dream. She had felt a tigerish quiver run through the body of a man when the crowd pressed close against her; instinct was responsible for the rest. Vaguely she recalled later that she had run forward and thrown up the arm that meant to strike; an impression of the knife, as the light struck it, alone remained vividly in her mind. She had thought of the thud it would make in falling, of the life-blood that would spout from the rent in the white coat, among the jewels and decorations. She had thought of the blankness of existence for her in a world empty of Maximilian, and she had known that, unless she could save him, it would be far better to die--then, in that moment.

More than this she had not thought or known. What she did was done well-nigh unconsciously, and she seemed to wake with a start at last, to hear herself sobbing, and to feel a sharp pain in her arm.

A hundred hands--not quick enough to save, yet quick enough to follow the lead she had given--had fought to seize the assassin, and prevent a second blow; while as for Sylvia, her work done, she forgot everything and every one but Maximilian.

It was he who kept her from falling, as the knife aimed at his heart struck her arm; he who held her, as she mechanically clung to him, half fainting--brave no longer, but only a frightened, weeping girl.

Sylvia heard him speak to the crowd--a few words that rang out through the furious babel like a cathedral bell. Still he held her; and she went with him up the steps of the red platform, because his arm compelled her, not by her own volition.

She hardly understood that the cheers of the multitude were for her as well as for him; and words separated themselves with comprehensive distinctness for the first time, when, the necessity for public action over, the Emperor turned to whisper in her ear. "Thank you--thank you," he said. "You are the bravest woman in the world. I had to keep them from killing that coward, but now I can say to you what is in my heart. I pray heaven you are not much hurt?"

"Oh, no, not hurt, but very happy," breathed Sylvia, hardly knowing what she said. She felt like a soul without a body; what could it matter if her arm ached or bled? The Emperor was safe, and she had saved him--she!

He pointed to her sleeve. "The knife struck you. I would that I could go with you myself, when you have done so much for me. Yet duty keeps me here; you understand that. Baron von Lynar and the Baroness will take you home at once. They----"

"But I would rather stay and see the rest," said Sylvia. "I am quite well now, so that I can go down to my friend----"

"If you stay, you must stay here," said Maximilian. "After what you have done; it is your place."

The ladies of the Court, who had with their husbands been waiting to receive the Emperor, crowded round her, as he turned to them with an expressive look and gesture. A seat was given her; she was a heroine, sharing the honours of the day with its hero.

There was scarcely a _grande dame_ among the distinguished company on the Emperor's platform to whom "Lady de Courcy" and her daughter had not a letter of introduction, from their friend. But no one knew at this moment of any other title to their acquaintance which the girl possessed, except the right conferred by her deed. All smiled on her with tearful eyes, though there were some who would have given their ten fingers to have had her praise and credit for their own.

Sylvia sat through the ceremonies, unconscious that thousands of eyes were on her face, aware of little that went on; scarcely seeing the statue of Rhaetia, whose glorious marble womanhood awakened the enthusiasm of the throng, hearing only the short, stirring speech delivered by Maximilian.

When it was all over the people merely waiting to see the Emperor ride away and the great personages disperse, while the music played Maximilian turned once more to Sylvia. Every one was listening; every one was looking on, and, no matter what his inclination, his words could be but few. He thanked her again for her courage, and for remaining, as if that had been a favour to him; asked where she was staying in town, and promised himself the pleasure of sending to inquire for her health during the evening. His desire would be to call at once in person, but, owing to the programme of the day and those immediately following, not only each hour, but each moment, would be officially occupied. These birthday rejoicings were troublesome, but duty must be done. And then Maximilian finished by saying that the Court physician would be commanded to attend upon her at the hotel.

With this and a chivalrous courtesy of parting, he was gone from the platform, Baron von Lynar, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, and his Baroness, having been told off as the fair heroine's escort home.

At another time, it might have amused the mischief-loving Sylvia to see Baroness von Lynar's surprise at learning her identity with the Miss de Courcy, of whom she had heard from Lady West. All the letters of introduction had reached their destination, it only remaining (according to Rhaetian etiquette in such matters) for Lady de Courcy to announce her arrival in Salzbrück by sending cards. But Sylvia had no thought for mischief now. She had been on the point of forgetting, until reminded by necessity, that she was only a masquerader, acting her borrowed part in a pageant. For the first time since she had voluntarily taken it up, that part became distasteful. She would have given much to throw it off, like a discarded garment, and be herself again. Nothing less than absolute sincerity seemed worthy of this day and its event.

But in the vulgar language of proverb, which no well-brought-up Princess should ever use, she had made her bed, and she must lie in it. It would never do for her to suddenly announce that she was not Miss de Courcy, but Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald. That would not now be fair to her mother nor to herself; above all, it would not be fair to the Emperor, handicapped by his debt of gratitude. Miss de Courcy she was, and Miss de Courcy she must for the present remain.

Naturally, the Grand Duchess fainted when her daughter was brought back to her, bleeding. But the wound in the round white arm was not deep. The Court physician was both consoling and complimentary, and by the time that messengers from the palace had arrived with inquiries from the Emperor and invitations to the Emperor's ball, the heroine's mother could dispense with her sal volatile.

She had fortunately much to think of. There was the important question of dress (since the ball was for the following night); there was the still more pressing question of the newspapers, which must not be allowed to learn or publish the borrowed name of de Courcy, lest complications should arise; and there were the questions which had to be asked of Sylvia. How _had_ she felt? How had she _dared_? How had the Emperor _looked_, and what had the Emperor _said_? If it had been natural for the Grand Duchess to faint, it was equally natural that she should not faint twice. She began to see, after all, the hand of Providence in her daughter's prank. And she wondered whether Sylvia's white satin with seed pearls or the gold-spangled blue tulle would be more becoming for the ball.

Next day the papers were full of the dastardly attack upon the Emperor by a French anarchist, who had disguised himself as an employee in the official household of the Burgomaster, trusting to the abstraction of the crowd at the last moment before the ceremonies, for passing undiscovered and accomplishing his murderous design. There were columns devoted to praise of the extraordinary courage and beauty of the young English lady, who, with marvellous presence of mind, had sprung between the Emperor and his would-be assassin, receiving on her own arm the blow intended for the Imperial breast. But, thanks to a few earnestly imploring words spoken in Baron von Lynar's ear, commands given to the "Besitzer" of the hotel, and the fact that Rhaetian editors are not yet permitted a wholly free hand, the young English lady was not named. She was a stranger; she was, according to the papers, "as yet unknown."

Chapter VII

Ten Minutes' Grace

NOT a window of the fourteenth-century yellow marble palace, in its famous "garden of the nine fountains," that was not ablaze with light, glittering against a far, dark back ground of snow-capped mountains. From afar, the crowd who might not pass the carved lions or the statuesque sentinels at the gates, stared, and pointed, and exclaimed, without jealousy of their betters. "Unser Max" was giving a ball; it was for them to watch the glittering line of state coaches and neat closed carriages that passed in and out--striving for a peep at the faces, the grand uniforms and the jewelled dresses, commenting, laughing, wondering what there would be for supper and with whom the Emperor would dance.

"There she is--there's the beautiful young lady who saved him! Isn't she like an angel?" cried a girl in the throng. Up went a hearty cheer, and the police had to keep back the good-natured flock that would have stopped the horses and pressed forward for a long look into a plain dark green brougham. Sylvia shrank out of sight against the cushions, blushing and breathing quickly, as she pressed her mother's hand.

"Dear people--dear, kind people," she thought. "I love them for loving him."

She had chosen to wear the white dress, though up to the last minute her mother had hesitated between the rival merits of seed pearls and gold spangles; and her beautiful face was as white as her gown, as the two ladies passed between bowing lackeys into the palace, through the great marble hall, on through the Rittersaal, to the throne-room, where the Emperor's guests awaited his coming.

It was etiquette for no one to arrive later than ten o'clock; and five minutes after that hour, Baron von Lynar, in his official capacity as Grand Master of Ceremonies, struck the floor thrice with his ivory gold-knobbed wand. This signified the approach of the Court from the Imperial dinner party, and Maximilian entered, with a singularly plain Russian Royal Highness on his arm.

Until the moment of his arrival the lovely stranger (admitted here by virtue of her service to the Emperor) had held all eyes: and even when he appeared she was not forgotten. Every one wished to see how she would be greeted by a grateful monarch.

The instant that his proud head--towering above most others--was seen in the throne-room, it was observed, even by the unobservant, that never had Maximilian been so handsome. His was a face notable for strength and intellect rather than any conventional beauty of feature; but to-night the stern lines that sometimes marred his forehead were smoothed away. He looked young, almost boyish; there was an eager light in his dark eyes, and he gave the impression of a man who had suddenly found a new interest in life.

He danced the first dance with the Russian Royalty, who was the most important guest of the evening, and, still rigidly adhering to the line of duty (which obtains in Court ballrooms as on battlefields), the second, third, and fourth dances were for Maximilian penances rather than pleasures. But for the fifth--a waltz--he bowed low before Sylvia.

Not a movement, scarcely a smile or a glance of hers that he had not seen, since his eyes first sought and found her, on the moment of his entrance. He had noted how well Baron von Lynar carried out his instructions regarding Miss de Courcy; he knew the partners who were presented to her for each dance, and to save his life or a national crisis he could not have worn the same expression in asking the Russian for a waltz as that which brightened his face in approaching Sylvia.

"Who is that girl?" inquired Count von Markstein in his usual gruff manner, as the arm of Maximilian circled the slim waist and the eyes of Maximilian rested on a radiant countenance upturned to his.

It was of Baroness von Lynar that the Chancellor asked his question, and she fluttered a diamond-spangled fan to hide smiling lips, as she answered, "What, Chancellor--are you in jest, or do you really not know?"

Count von Markstein turned his cold eyes from the two figures, so close together, moving rhythmically as poetry--to the face of the middle-aged beauty. Once he had admired her as much as it was in his nature to admire any woman; but that day was long past, and now such power as she had left over him was merely to excite a feeling of irritation.

"I do not often jest," he answered slowly.

"Ah, we all know that truly great men have seldom a sense of humour," purred the Baroness, who was by birth an Austrian, and loved laughter better than anything else in the word--except her vanishing beauty. "I should have remembered, and not tried your patience. 'That girl,' as you somewhat brusquely call her, is the English Miss de Courcy, whose mother has come to Salzbrück armed with such sheaves of introductions to us all. And she it is who yesterday saved the most valued life in the Empire. They are staying at the Hohenburgerhof; I thought you must have known."

"I did not see the young lady's face yesterday," returned the Chancellor, whose indifference to women and merciless justice to both sexes alike had early earned him the sobriquet of "Iron Heart." "As for what this girl did, if it had not been she who intervened, it would have been another. It was merely by a chance that her arm struck up the weapon first."

"Do you not think, then, that His Majesty does right to single her out for so much honour?" Baroness von Lynar's eyes were on the dancers, yet that mysterious skill which some women have, enabled her to see the slightest change of expression on the Chancellor's square, lined countenance.

"His Majesty could not do otherwise," he replied. "An invitation to a ball; a dance or two; a call to pay his respects; a gentleman could not be less gracious. And His Majesty is a most chivalrous gentleman."

"He has had good training." This with a smile and the dainty ghost of a bow to the man who had been as a second father to Maximilian, when his own father had died. "But--we are old friends, Chancellor" (it had not been her fault that they were not more, in the days before she was Baroness von Lynar); "do you _really_ think it will end with an invitation, a dance, and a call? Look at the girl's face, and tell me that?"

Old "Iron Heart" frowned and glared, and wondered what he had seen twenty years ago to admire in this woman. He would have escaped if he could, but he would not be openly rude to the wife of the Grand Master of Ceremonies; and besides, he was willing perhaps to show the lady that her innuendoes were as the buzzing of a fly about his ears.

"I am half-way between sixty and seventy, and no longer a judge of a woman's attractions," he retorted. "Even were she Helen herself, the invitation, the dance, and the call--with the present of some jewelled souvenir, perhaps--are all that are permissible in the circumstances."

"What circumstances?" was the innocent, questioning reply.

"The young lady is not of Royal blood. And His Majesty--thank God--is not a _roué_."

"But he has a heart, and he has eyes. He may never have used them before. Yet there must always be a first time; and the higher and more strongly built the tower, the greater the fall thereof."

"Need we discuss improbabilities, Baroness von Lynar? Neither you nor I is the Emperor's keeper."

"We are his friends--his most intimate friends. And you and I have known each other for twenty years. It amuses me to discuss what you call 'improbabilities'. Come--for once, humour me, Chancellor. Not for the world would I hint that His Majesty is less than an example to all men, in honour: nor would I suggest that Miss de Courcy could be tempted to indiscretion. But yet I'd be ready to wager--the Emperor being human and the girl the most dazzling of beauties--that an acquaintance so romantically begun will not end with a ball and a call!"

"What could there possibly be more, madam--in honour?"

The Chancellor's voice shook with stifled anger, and he looked--so thought his quondam friend--with his square face, his wide nostrils, and his prominent eyes--delightfully like a baited bull. The Baroness von Lynar was thoroughly enjoying herself. She well knew the old man's desire for the Emperor's marriage, and, though she was not in the secret of his plans, would have felt little surprise at learning that an eligible Empress had already been selected. What fun it was to ruffle the temper of the surly old bear! How much more fun it would be genuinely to alarm him for the success of his schemes!

"What could there be more?" she echoed. "Why, they will see much of each other. There will be many dances, many calls--in a word, a serial romance instead of a short story. Why should His Majesty not know the pleasure of a pure platonic friendship with a beautiful young woman?"

"Because Plato is out of fashion, and, as I have said, the Emperor is a man of honour," growled the Chancellor. "Even if--which I doubt--a woman could deeply influence his life----"

"You doubt that? Then you don't know the Emperor!"

"If it were so, when he felt the danger he would keep aloof for the woman's sake. You tell me this English miss is at a hotel in Salzbrück. What would be said of her if Maximilian continually visited her there? To meet her incognito would be an insult. For the Emperor of Rhaetia to call upon a young woman day after day at the Hohenburgerhof would bring a storm of scandal about her ears. That would be but poor reward for the woman who saved his life."

Baroness von Lynar flushed faintly, under the delicate apology of her rouge. For the fraction of a second she looked rather blank, for she had insisted upon the argument, and it was going against her. She had not stopped to view the question from every side, in her haste to annoy the Chancellor. So far she had only vexed him, She owed him a great deal more than a petty stab of vexation--a debt which during twenty years, she had been repaying in small instalments. If she could prove her point now--or rather, if Maximilian would prove it for her, and she could wipe the slate clean once and forever from the obligations of revenge, it would be something to live for. Yet how was that to be done, since Count von Markstein was in the right about his Imperial master?

But the wife of the Grand Master of Ceremonies was a woman of resource. The cloud on her still handsome face gradually lifted, and she beamed more brightly than before. The little pin-point prick she had inflicted need not be an anti-climax after all.

"Dear Chancellor, how well you know His Majesty!" she ejaculated. "If-- being but a young man, and a hot-blooded one, despite his high principles and his former indifference to women--he should not stop to count the cost for himself, you would no doubt take advantage of your warm friendship to remind him?"

"I should indeed do so," said the Chancellor grimly, "were there the slightest chance of such necessity arising."

"It is but a piece with your well-known integrity and courage. What a comfort, therefore, that the necessity is _unlikely_ to arise!"

The old man stared her in the face. "I must have misunderstood you," he sneered. "I thought, in your opinion, the opposite conclusion was foregone?"

"But" (and the Baroness smiled her most charming smile) "suppose that Lady de Courcy and her daughter were not remaining at the hotel?"

The Chancellor's cold eyes brightened--for, in reality, she had given him an uneasy moment. "Ah--then they are going away?"

"I hear," returned Baroness von Lynar slowly, pleasantly, and distinctly, "that they have been asked to the country to visit one of His Majesty's oldest and most intimate friends."

* * * * *

Maximilian was said not to care for dancing, though he danced well--as it was his pride to excel in everything worth doing. Certainly there was usually a perfunctoriness about his manner in a ballroom, a suggestion of a man on duty in his grave face, his readiness to lead a partner to her seat when a dance was over.

But to-night! The white arm on his--the girlish arm that had been firm as a man's in his defense; the perfume of her hair, and the glamour of the light upon it; the beating of her heart near his as they danced (or did he only fancy that he felt it?); the glory of her eyes, when they were lifted from a wonder-shadow of lashes; the lissom grace of her girlhood, so childlike, so suggestive of spring, contrasting with the voluptuous summer of Rhaetian types of beauty; the rose flush that spread and spread from her cheeks to the Madonna arch of her brows, as he looked, because he could not help looking! To-night was different from any other night, because she was different from any other woman; Maximilian fancied that an accident had befallen the musicians when the music for that waltz came suddenly, as it seemed, to an end.

At the Rhaetian Court there was always a stately interval of ten minutes after each dance. But what are ten minutes to a man who has things to say which could not be said in ten hours?

They had hardly spoken yet--since the day on the mountain; and, at this moment, each was wondering whether or no the memory of that day should be ignored. Maximilian did not intend to speak of it; Sylvia did not intend to speak of it. But, then, how few matters turn out as people plan!

Next to the throne-room was the ballroom; and beyond was another called the "Waldsaal." Maximilian had had this fitted up for his own pleasure; and it was named the "Waldsaal" because it represented a forest. Walls and ceiling were skilfully covered with thickly growing creepers, trained over invisible wires, through which peeped stars of electric light, like the chequers of sunshine that stray between netted branches. There were realistic grottoes of dark rock, growing trees planted in huge boxes hidden by ivy; while here and there, out of shadowed corners, glared the glassy eyes of birds and animals-- eagles, bears, stags, and chamois--that the Emperor had shot. This room, so vast as to appear empty when dozens of people wandered under its trees and among its rock grottoes, was thrown open to the dancers when ever a ball was given at the palace; and, because of its novel and curious effect, it was more popular than the conservatories and palm-houses. It was here that Maximilian led Sylvia after their waltz; and as she laid her hand upon his arm, an almost overmastering desire seized him to kiss the long white glove, upon the wound she had received for him.

"This is a madness," he said to himself. "It must pass." And aloud, meaning to say some thing else--something courteous and common place, he exclaimed, "Why did you do it?"

Sylvia glanced up at him in surprise.

"I don't understand." And then, in an instant, well-nigh before the words were out, she did understand. She knew that he had not intended to ask the question; but, having spoken, it was characteristic of him to stand by his guns.

"I mean--the thing I shall have to thank you for always," he replied.

If Sylvia had been given time to think, she might have prepared an answer. But given no time, she told only the bald truth. "I couldn't help it."

He looked straight into her eyes. "You couldn't help risking your life to----" He did not finish.

"It was to save----" Her words also died incomplete.

Then it was that he forgot various restrictions of etiquette which an Emperor, in conversing with a commoner--be the commoner man or woman-- is not supposed to neglect.

For one thing, his voice grew unsteady, and his tone was eager as that of some ineligible subaltern with the girl of his first love.

"There is something I should like to show you," he said. Opening a button of the military coat, blazing with jewels and orders, he drew out a loop of thin gold chain. At the end dangled some small object that flashed under a star of electric light.

"My ring!" exclaimed Sylvia in a breathless whisper.

Thus perished the Emperor's intention to ignore the day that had been theirs in the past.

"Your ring. You gave it to Max; he has kept it. He will always keep it. Are you surprised?"

Sylvia wished to say "Yes," but instead she answered "No," because pretty fibs require preparation; it is only the truth that speaks itself.

"You are not? Then--you guessed, yesterday?"

"I knew--at Heiligengelt. But I wish I need not tell you."

Silence between them for a moment, while Maximilian digested her answer, slowly realizing what it meant. He remembered the bread and ham; the cow, and the rücksacks; he remembered everything and laughed out, boyishly.

"You knew, at Heiligengelt! But not on the mountain when----"

"Yes, I knew even then. It was only a chance--the same adventure might have happened to hundreds of people without their guessing. But I had happened to hear that you went there sometimes, and I had seen many of your pictures--so, when I met a man, I--oh, I wish you had not asked me!"

"Why?"

"Because--one might have to be afraid of an Emperor if he were angry."

"Do I look angry?"

Their eyes met, and dwelt, laughing at first, then probing unexpected depths which drove away all thought of laughter. Something that seemed alive and independent of control leaped in Maximilian's breast. He shut his lips tightly. Both forgot that a question had been asked, though it was Sylvia who spoke first since it is easier for a woman than for a man to hide feeling behind conventionality.

"I wonder you kept the ring--after all my rudeness."

"I had a special reason for keeping the ring,"

"Will you tell it me?"

"You are quick at forming conclusions, Miss de Courcy. Can't you guess?----"

"To remind you never to help strange young women on mountains?"

"No--not for that."

"I am not to ask the reason?"

"On that day you asked what you chose. All the more should you do so now, since there is nothing I could refuse you."

"Not the half of your kingdom--like the Royal men in fairy stories?"

The light words struck a chord they had not aimed to touch. They went echoing on and on, till they reached that inner part of himself which the Emperor knew least--his heart. Half his kingdom? Yes, he would give it to her, if he could. Heavens! what such a partnership would be!

"Ask anything you will," he said, as a man speaks in a dream.

"Then tell me--why you kept the ring?"

"Because the only woman I ever cared--to make my friend, took it from her finger and gave it to me."

"Now the Emperor is pleased to pay compliments."

"You don't think that, really? You know I am sincere."

"But you had only seen me for an hour. Instead of meriting your friendship, I had, on the contrary----"

"For one hour? How long ago is that hour? A week or so, I suppose--as time counts. But then came yesterday, and the thing you did for me. Now I have known you always."

"If you had, perhaps you would not want me for your friend."

"I do want you."

The words would come. It was true--already true. He did want her. But not only as a friend. His world, a world without women or passion ardent enough to eclipse principles, was upside down.

It was well that the ten minutes' grace between dances was over, the music for the next about to begin. A young officer, Count von Markstein's half-brother, who was to be Sylvia's partner, came toward her, then stepped back, seeing that she was with the Emperor. But Maximilian permitted his approach, with a gesture.

"Good-bye," said Sylvia, while her words could still only be heard by the ears for which they were intended.

"Not good-bye--we are to be friends."

"Yes, in heart. But--we shall not often meet."

"Are you going from Salzbrück soon, then?"

"Perhaps."

"I must see you. I will see you--_once more_, whatever comes!"

"Yes. Once more, but----"

"After that----"

"Who knows--Captain von Markstein--Yes, it is our dance."

* * * * *

"Once more--once more!" The words lingered in Sylvia's ears. She heard them through everything, as one hears the undertone of a mountain torrent, though a brass band brays out some martial air to drown its music.

Once more he would see her. She could guess why it might be only once, even if he would fain have had it more. This game of hers, begun with such a light heart, was more difficult to play than she had dreamed. If she could but be sure he _cared_; if he would tell her this, in words, the rest might be easy; though, even so, she did not quite see how the end should come. Yet how, in honour, _could_ he tell her that he cared? While, if he told her in any other way, how could she bear her life? "Once more!" What would happen in that once more? Surely nothing but a repetition of grateful thanks and courteous words, equivalent to farewell.

To be sure, Miss de Courcy and her mother might go away, and the negotiations between the Emperor's advisers and the Grand Duchess of Eltzburg-Neuwald for her daughter's hand could be allowed to continue, as if no outside influence had ruffled the peaceful current of events. Then, in the end, a surprise would come for Maximilian; wilful Princess Sylvia would have had her little romance, and all might be said to end well. But something within Sylvia's fast-beating heart refused to be satisfied with so comparatively tame a last chapter, a finis so obvious. She had tasted a sweet, stimulating draught--she who had been brought carefully up on milk and water--and she was loth to put the cup down, still half-full and sparkling.

"Once more!" If only that once could be magnified into many times; if she could have her chance--her "fling," like other girls!

So she was thinking in the carriage, by her mother's side, driving back to the Hohenburgerhof from the palace; and the Grand Duchess was forced to speak twice before her daughter became aware that silence had been broken.

"I forgot to tell you something, Sylvia."

"Ye-es, mother?"

"Your great success has made me absentminded, child. You looked like a shining white lily among all those handsome, overblown Rhaetian women."

"Thank you, dear. Was that what you forgot to say?"

"Oh, no! It was this. The Baroness von Lynar has been most kind. She urges us to give up our rooms at the hotel, on the first of the week, and join her house party at Schloss Lynarberg. It is only a few miles out of town. What do you think of the plan?"

"Leave--Salzbrück?"

"She has asked a number of friends--to meet the Emperor."

"Oh! He did not speak of it--when we danced."

"But she has mentioned it to him since, no doubt--before giving me the invitation. Intimate friend of his as she is, she would not dare ask people to meet him, if he had not first sanctioned the suggestion. Still, she can afford to be more or less informal. The Baroness was dancing with the Emperor, I remember now, just before she came to me. They were talking together quite earnestly. I can recall the expression of his face."

"Was it pleased, or----"

"I was wondering what she had said to make him look so happy. Perhaps----"

"W-What answer did you give Baroness von Lynar?"

"I told her--I thought you wouldn't mind--I told her that we would go."

Chapter VIII

The Bear In His Den

SCHLOSS LYNARBERG stands high on a promontory overlooking a lake, half a dozen miles to the south of Salzbrück. The castle is modern, with pointed turrets and fretted minarets, and, being built of marble, throws a dazzling reflection, like a great submerged swan, into the blue waters of the Kaisersee. Everything about the place, from its tropical gardens to its terraced roofs, suggests luxury, gaiety, pleasure. On the opposite bank of the lake frowns the ancient fortified stronghold of the Counts von Markstein, squatting on its rocky base like a huge black dragon on the coils of its own tail. Its small, deep-set windows glare across the bright waters at the white splendour of Lynarberg, like the jealous eyes of the monster waiting its chance to spring upon and devour a beautiful young maiden.

The moods of Baroness von Lynar, regarding dark old Schloss Markstein, had varied during her residence by the lake. Sometimes she pleased herself by reflecting that the man who had slighted her lived in less luxury than she had made her own. Again, the thought that "the old bear" could crouch in his den and observe all that went on at Lynarberg, got upon her nerves. She could have shrieked and shaken her fist at the huddled mass of stone across the water. But, during the first days of the Emperor's visit at her house, she often glanced at the grim outlines of the castle, and smiled.

"Can you see, old bear?" she would say to herself. "Are you watching, over there? Do you guess _now_ who is responsible for the growth of this love-flower you'd stick your claws into and tear, if you could? But you can't, you know. There's nothing you can do--nothing but sit there and growl, and realize that you've been outwitted for once--by a woman, too. How do you like the prospect, old bear? Do you lie awake at night and wonder what's to become of your fine schemes for the Emperor's marriage? After all, there are some things which can be done by a woman with tact and money, pleasant houses and an easy-going husband, that the cleverest statesman can't undo. Will you admit so much at last, old grisly one?"

Thus the Baroness would amuse herself at odd moments, when she was not busily arranging original and elaborate entertainments for her guests. And she rejoiced especially at having had the forethought to invite Otto von Markstein, the Chancellor's half-brother. There was a barrier of nearly thirty-five years difference in age between the two men, and they had never been friends, for the elder was temperamentally unable to sympathize with the tastes or understand the temptations of the younger. But it was whispered at Court that the Chancellor had more than once used the gay and popular captain of cavalry for a cat's-paw, in pulling some very big chestnuts out of the fire, and that he would do the same again, if occasion arose. "Handsome Otto"--so known among his admirers--"The Chancellor's Jackal"--thus nicknamed by his enemies--would have found difficulty in keeping up appearances without the allowance granted by his brother. The ill-assorted pair were often in communication, and the Baroness liked to think that news fresh from Lynarberg must sooner or later be wafted across the water to Markstein. "Iron Heart" would hear of that which his iron hand was powerless to crush; and the old bear would be ready to devour himself in impotent fury.

Therefore she was not surprised, when the Emperor had been for two days at Lynarberg, and there were still three more of his visit to run, that an urgent letter should arrive for Captain von Markstein from the Chancellor.

Poor old Eberhard was wrestling with his enemy, gout, it appeared, and desired Otto's immediate presence. Such a summons could not be neglected; Otto's whole future depended on his brother's caprice, he hinted to the Baroness, in asking leave to desert her pleasant party for a few hours. And she had sent the Chancellor her regards, regretting his indisposition; and Otto had been charged with a friendly message from the Emperor as well. When he had driven off in one of the Lynarberg carriages, promising to be back in time for dinner and a concert in the evening, the Baroness spent all her energies in getting up an impromptu riding party, which would afford Maximilian the chance of another _tête-à-tête_ with Miss de Courcy.

Already many such had been arranged, apparently without giving rise to gossip; and if the flirtation (which was to disgust Maximilian with his Chancellor's matrimonial projects) did not progress with startling rapidity, it would not be the fault of an accommodating hostess.

"Otto has been bidden to use his eyes and ears at my house, and now he is called upon to hand in his report," she said to herself, when her guest had departed on his errand of compassion. But, for once at least in his career, the "Chancellor's Jackal" was wronged by unjust suspicions. He arrived at Markstein ignorant of his brother's motive in sending, though he did not for an instant believe it to be the one alleged.

The Chancellor was in his dark, octagonal study, reading a budget of letters, when Otto was announced. If he were ill, he did not show his suffering. His square face, with its beetling brows, its domelike forehead, was graven with no deeper lines, looked no more like a mask of carved mahogany, than usual.

"Sit down," he said gruffly, flinging aside an envelope postmarked Abruzzia. "I shall be ready to talk with you in a minute."

Otto took the least uncomfortable chair in the Room--which was saying but little in its favour, as the newest article of furniture there had been made a hundred years before the world understood the luxury of lounging. Over the high mantel hung a silver shield, so brightly polished as to perform the office of a mirror. From where Otto sat, rigid and upright, he could see himself vignetted in reflection. He admired his complexion, which was like a girl's; pointed the ends of his fair moustache with nervous cigarette-stained fingers and wondered ruefully which of his pleasant peccadilloes had buzzed to Eberhard's ears. Half unconsciously his gaze turned from his own agreeable image to the outer page of the letter, held in a hand so veined that it resembled a surface of rock covered with the sprawling roots of old trees. Otto had just time to recognize the writing as that of the Crown Prince of Abruzzia, whom he had met, when a pair of keen eyes, curtained with wrinkled lids, peered over the crested sheet of paper.

"It's coming," thought Otto. "What can the old curmudgeon have found out?"

But, to his surprise, the Chancellor's first words had no connection with him or his misdeeds.

"So Maximilian is amusing himself at Lynarberg?" the old man grunted.

Otto's face visibly brightened. He was not clever or full of resources, and he would always prefer discussing the affairs of others with this elder brother, rather than his own. "Oh, yes," he answered alertly. "His Majesty seems to be amusing himself uncommonly well. But you, Eberhard! Tell me of yourself. You sent for me. Your gout----"

"The devil run away with my gout!"

Otto started. "I devoutly wish he would, so he left you behind," he retorted--meaning exactly the opposite, as he usually did when talking with the Chancellor. "But----"

"Don't tell me you supposed I had sent for you that I might have the pleasure of your condolences?"

"No-o," laughed Otto. "I fancied there was another reason; but I am bound in common politeness to take your sincerity for granted until you undeceive me."

"Hang common politeness!" remarked the old bear--or as nearly in those words as the Rhaetian language permitted. "I sent for you to tell me what mischief that witch-hawk Malvine von Lynar is hatching. You are on the spot. You should see everything. It will not be the worse for you if for once you have used those handsome eyes of yours to some advantage!"

Otto was genuinely astonished, as during the long drive he had been carefully bracing himself against a personal attack. He sat pulling his moustache, and was still trying to remember some striking incident with which to adorn his narrative, when the Chancellor began again.

"Has Maximilian been playing the fool at Lynarberg these last two days?"

"Fool is a strong word to use in connection with one's sovereign," smiled Otto, recovering his presence of mind. "But if by playing the fool you mean falling in love, why, then, brother, I should say he had done little else during those two days you mention."

"Iron Heart" growled out a word which he would certainly not have uttered in his Royal master's presence, especially in the connection he suggested. "Give me a detailed account of what has been going on, from beginning to end," he commanded.

Otto looked thoughtful. This, then, explained the sudden summons. He was to be let off easily; but, his suspense relieved, he was not ready to be satisfied with purely negative blessings.

"It seems a little like telling tales out of school, doesn't it?" he gently objected.

"Schoolboys with empty pockets do that sometimes," sneered the Chancellor. "But perhaps your pockets are not empty--eh?"

"They are in a chronic state of emptiness!" groaned Otto.

"On the fifteenth day of October your quarterly allowance will be paid," said "Iron Heart." "I would increase the instalment by the amount of five thousand gulden, if you took pains to--humour any whim of mine."

"I am always delighted to please you," answered Otto, with alacrity. "It is only natural, living the monotonous life you do, when not busy with affairs of state, that you should care to hear what goes on in the world outside; and I will gladly do my best as a _raconteur_."

"Don't lie," said the Chancellor. "The habit is growing on you. You lie to yourself; presently you will _believe_ yourself, and then all hope for your soul will be over. I want to know how far Maximilian has gone in his infatuation for this English girl. I am not afraid to speak plainly to you, and you can safely do the same with me. The woman Von Lynar attempted to draw me, as she would have expressed it, on this subject, and, by Heaven, I'm ashamed to say that she succeeded. She suggested an entanglement; I replied that Maximilian was not the man to rouse a hornet-nest of gossip round the ears of a woman who had saved his life. No matter what his inclination might be, he would pay her no repeated visits at the Hohenburgerhof. This thrust the Von Lynar Parried--as if repeating a mere rumour--by remarking that she understood the girl was to stay at the house of some one among the Emperor's friends. I attached little importance to her chatter, believing it but a spiteful slap such as it is the tiger-cat's pleasure to deal those she hates. For once in her life, though, she has stolen a march upon me. The secret was only kept until too late for me to prevent the Emperor from fulfilling his engagement; then I don't doubt she was all eagerness that I should hear of her success."

"Do you think that, even if you had known sooner, you could have prevented the Emperor from going to Lynarberg?" inquired Otto, with thinly veiled incredulity. "If you are iron, he is steel."

"I _would_ have prevented it," retorted the Chancellor. "I should have made no bones about the reason, for I have found that the only way with Maximilian is to tell him the truth, and fight it out--my experience against his obstinacy. If advice and warning had not sufficed to keep him from insulting the girl who is to be his wife, and injuring the reputation of the girl who never can be, I would have devised some other expedient. I am not a man easily thwarted."

"Nor is he," added Otto. "But, since you seem so determined to nip this blossom of love in the bud, it is not yet, we'll hope, too late for frost."

"I sent for you," said the Chancellor, brushing away metaphor with an intolerant gesture, "to show me the exact spot on which to lay a finger."

"And I will try to deserve your confidence," gracefully responded the young officer. "Let me see where it will be best to begin. Well, as you know, it is simpler for the Emperor to see much of a woman he favours with his regard in a friend's house than at the Hohenburgerhof or any hotel in Rhaetia. This particular woman saved his life at the risk of her own, and it is so natural he should wish to do her honour, that everybody takes his attitude for granted. Miss de Courcy and her mother, with several others of our party, had been for some days guests at Lynarberg before the Emperor came, and were ready to receive him. The girl is exceptionally beautiful, with a winning manner which appeals to women equally with men. Miss de Courcy had her friends and admirers in the house before the Emperor arrived; not one of the Baroness von Lynar's guests incline to put an evil construction on a little flirtation between her and Maximilian. Are you sure, Eberhard, that _you_ are not taking too serious a view of the matter?"

"It cannot be regarded too seriously, in the circumstances. Princesses are women, and gossip is hydra-headed. When the lady who has been allowed to understand that the Emperor only waits an opportunity of formally asking for her hand hears--as she will hear--that he has seized this moment for his first _liaison_ with another woman, neither she nor her family are likely to take the news kindly. She is German; on her father's side, second cousin to Kaiser Wilhelm. She is English; on her mother's side, distantly related to Queen Victoria. Both countries would have reason to resent a slight."

"The little affair must be hushed up," said Otto.

"It must be stopped," said the Chancellor.

"A-ach!" sighed the younger brother. There was a world of meaning in the long-drawn breath, if the elder cared to read it.

At least, it roused him to a renewed sense of irritation. "Go on," he demanded. "Go on with your sorry tale."

"After all, when one comes to the telling, there isn't much that can be put into words," Otto reflected aloud. "The Emperor's place at the table has naturally been beside the Baroness. For next neighbour she considerately gave him Miss de Courcy. It has been noticed that they have talked together as much as etiquette to the hostess allowed, during dinner. Then--the Emperor being an old friend of the Von Lynars, accustomed to visiting at Lynarberg since he was a boy--he took it upon himself to show the English girl some of the beauties of the place. I know that they went alone together to the rose-garden, which is famous, you remember; and Miss de Courcy came back with her hands full of flowers, doubtless gathered for her by Maximilian. On the evening of his arrival we were all out on the lake in small boats. The Emperor rowed Miss de Courcy to the Isle of Cupid, to see Thorwaldsen's statue, and lesser mortals joined them there. Yesterday, we had a picnic at the Seebachfall. The Emperor and Miss de Courcy are both remarkably good climbers, and reached the top long before the others. I was close behind, however, with our friend Malvine, at starting from the carriages, and I overheard some joke between them about a mountain, and a cow; the Emperor spoke of milking as a 'fine art', and remarked that he had lately learned. I could hear no more; but it struck me that the two were on terms of _camaraderie_.

"Last night, there were fireworks on the lake (perhaps you saw something of them from your windows?); the Emperor and Miss de Courcy watched them side by side--for everything was conducted quite unconventionally; you know he hates formality when visiting as much as he hates the lack of it in business. Afterward, we had an impromptu cotillon, with several new figures invented by the Baroness; Maximilian and Miss de Courcy danced often together. This morning, we all visited the stables, the kennels, and the gardens; the Emperor walked sometimes with the hostess, sometimes with Miss de Courcy. This brings us up to the moment of my departure; for the afternoon, I fancy Malvine had planned a ride."

"The girl is a fool and an adventuress!" pronounced the Chancellor. "She must know that nothing can come of such folly--except scandal."

Otto shrugged his stiffly-padded shoulders. "A woman in love doesn't stop to count the cost!"

"So! you fancy her in 'love' with the Emperor?"

"With the man, rather than the Emperor, if I am a judge of character."

"Which you are not!" Old "Iron Heart" brusquely disposed of that suggestion. "The silliest woman could pull wool over your eyes, if she cared to take the trouble."

"This one does not care. She hardly knows that I exist."

"Humph!" The Chancellor peered over his gold-bowed spectacles at his young brother's handsome face. "That's a pity. You might have tried cutting Maximilian out! You would not be a bad match for an ambitious woman, with your good looks, our position, and my money."

"Your money?"

"I mean, if I chose to proclaim you my heir. I would do that, if you married to please me. Who are these De Courcys?"

"I have not had the curiosity to inquire into their antecedents," said Otto. "I only know that they are ladies, that they must be persons of consequence in their own country (or they could not have got letters to everybody here from Lady West), and that the girl is the handsomest creature living."

"The tiger-cat said that Lady West was responsible for the mother and daughter," soliloquized the Chancellor aloud. "But Rhaetia is a long cry from England. And letters are forged sometimes. I have known such things more than once in my experience. Fetch me a big red volume you will find on the third shelf of the bookcase, in the corner by the window that overlooks the lake. The book is Burke's Peerage!"

Otto rose promptly to obey. He was rather thoughtful. His brother had put a completely new idea into his head.

Presently the red volume was discovered and laid open on the desk before the Chancellor, who slowly turned to the required page. As his eye fell upon a long line of De Courcys, his face changed, and the bristling brows drew together in a straight line. At least, these women did not appear to be adventuresses, in the ordinary acceptation of the term.

There they were; his square-tipped finger found and pressed down upon the printed names, with a dig that symbolized its disposition toward their claimants.

"The girl's mother is the widow of Sir Thomas, sixth Baron de Courcy," the Chancellor mumbled half-aloud. "Son, Thomas Alfred--um--um--um-- twelve years old; daughter, Gladys Irene Mary Katherine, twenty-eight. Humph! She's no chicken; she ought to have better sense."

"Twenty-eight!" echoed Otto. "I'll be _hanged_ if she's twenty-eight."

"She doesn't look it?"

"Not a day more than eighteen. Might be younger. I never was so surprised to learn a woman's age. By the way, I heard her telling Von Lynar last night, _a propos_ of our great Rhaetian victory in that month and year, that she was born in June, '79. If so she would now have been twenty-one. It was difficult to believe her even as much. When she'd spoken, I remember she gave a sudden start and blush, looking across the room at her mother, as though she were frightened. I suppose she hoped there was no copy of this great red book at Lynarberg."

"That thought might have been in her mind," grunted the Chancellor, "or----" He left his sentence unfinished, and sat, with prominent, unseeing eyes fixed in an owlish stare on the open page of Burke.

"Did you really mean what you said a few minutes ago about my marriage?" Otto ventured to attract his brother's attention. "Because if you did----"

"If I did--what then?"

"I might--try to please you in my choice of a wife."

"Be more explicit. You mean you would endeavour to show this Miss de Courcy that a bird in the hand is worth an Emperor in the bush--a bramble bush at that?"

"Yes, I would do my best. I have--er--some advantages."

"You have. And I was on the point of suggesting that you should make the most of them in her eyes, before--_you brought me this book_." The large forefinger tapped the page of De Courcys, while two grim lines of dogged purpose framed the Chancellor's long-lipped mouth.

"And now you've changed your mind?" There was a distinct note of disappointment in "handsome Otto's" voice.

"I don't say that. I merely say, 'Wait'. Make yourself as indispensable to the lady as you choose; that is, on your own responsibility; but don't pledge yourself, and don't count upon my promise or my money, until you hear again. By that time--well, we shall see what we shall see. Keep your hand in; but wait--wait."

"How long am I to wait? If the thing is to be done at all, it must be done soon. Meanwhile, the Emperor makes all the running."

The Chancellor looked up, his eyes introspective, his fist still covering the De Courcys.

"You are to wait until I have had answers to a couple of telegrams I shall send to-night."

Chapter IX

A White Night

"You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfy our eyes

More by your number than your light,

You common people of the skies---

What are you when the moon shall rise?"

THE first and second dressing-gongs had sounded at Schloss Lynarberg on the evening of the day after Otto's visit to his brother, and the Grand Duchess was beginning to wonder what detained her daughter, when ringed fingers tapped smartly at the door. "Come in!" she answered the familiar sound, and Sylvia appeared on the threshold, still in the tennis dress she had worn that afternoon. She stood for an instant without speaking, her face so radiantly beautiful that it seemed illumined by a light from within.

It had been on the tip of her mother's tongue to scold the girl for her delay, since to be late was an almost unpardonable offense, with Royalty in the house. But the words died, and others of a different sort came trooping to their place.

"Sylvia, what is it? You look--I hardly know _how_ you look! But something has happened."

The Princess came slowly across the room, smiling with the air of one who walks in sleep. She hardly appeared to see the chair she took, but sat down as if by instinct, then rested her elbows on her knees, her chin nestling between her palms, like a pinky-white rose in its calyx.

"You may go, Josephine," said the Grand Duchess to her maid. "I will ring when I want you again."

The elaborate process of dressing her luxuriant gray hair had just been finished. The rest might wait until curiosity was satisfied.

But Sylvia sat still, dreaming. The Grand Duchess had to speak twice in a raised tone before she could command attention. "My