"Na," said the old lady, who had watched him reading, her arms folded over her deep bosom, "what manner of letter is this at all for a bride who has run away from her man? That is verily but a foolish child. She was too young to be wed, eh, Geiger-Onkel?"
"That is the letter of a suffering woman," quoth Geiger-Hans, softly, "and the whole letter, Mother Friedel, is one cry towards him."
"Jeminy, and where do you see that?" whispered the dame with a shrug for the poor loony. "Well," she added, in her cheerful undertone, "we've had a splendid night, our skin is as cool as a little frog's, and we are healing as quick as a sapling. I wouldn't say but that in another couple of weeks we might be quite able to travel."
Geiger-Hans looked at the bed, at the fine sleeping face, placidly and wholesomely pale, at the charming languid hand flung in abandonment on the purple coverlet.
"Mother Friedel," he said, and his voice was none the less decided because so low pitched, "three days must see us on the road again."
Heedless of her scandalized protest he folded the letter and, thrusting it into his breast, gave himself up to reflection. A smile, half-bitter, half-tender, hovered upon his lips. The child ... she had remembered him—after her old hound.
CHAPTER XXI
AT THE MOCK VERSAILLES
"You are just a porcelain trifle, Belle Marquise!
Just a thing of puffs and patches,
Made for madrigals and catches,
Not for heart-wounds, but for scratches..."
AUSTIN DOBSON.
Viennese Betty was in Cassel; and if ever the right person was in the right place, it was Betty in Cassel, the Frenchified Cassel at least of King Jerome. She breathed in its irresponsible, exciting, immoral atmosphere with rapture. Its tinfoil splendour was utterly satisfying to her eyes; its jests provoked her charmed laughter; its aims measured her utmost ambitions. To shine among these doubtful stars; to take the lead in frivolities, without fear of losing caste—nay, with every prospect of being lifted upon giddy triumph as the newest and most influential "pompadourette"—even in her dreams Betty had never devised for herself a more enchanting prospect! To make the thing complete, her Bluebeard was tame, absolutely at her mercy ... and held relentlessly at a distance.