“What is it?” questioned Auguste, peering out in the direction in which his friend had been looking.
He saw nothing, except the figure of a tall, spare man, clad in the grave costume of the nineteenth century. His long frock coat was buttoned closely round his figure, and he held his hands behind his back, and stooped slightly as he walked towards the palace with slow, deliberate steps.
“Who is that man? Do you know him?”
And the King answered beneath his breath—
“Yes; it is the Court physician, Doctor Krauss.”
CHAPTER IX
DOROTHEA’S CHOICE
Franz Gitten sat on a wooden seat at the side of his cottage porch, and puffed discontentedly at the long pipe with the china bowl. Through the open door of the lodge came an occasional sound of the rattling of crockery, and the clashing of knives and forks. It was the hour after the midday meal, and his daughter was busy in the kitchen.
Franz smoked and listened, and over his face there deepened a look of resentment. It was the look of a man who feels that he has been hardly used. He had worn the same look all day, and whenever his eye had caught Dorothea’s, he had thrown a reproachful expression into it, as of a father who had striven hard for his child’s welfare, and had been rewarded by that child with ingratitude.
Nothing had passed between the two on the subject which was uppermost in both their minds. Since Johann’s stunning revelation of the day before, a barrier had for the first time sprung up between them. Dorothea’s trustful confidence in her father had apparently gone forever, but whether out of a lingering respect for him, or from a forlorn wish not to have her suspicions of him turned into certainties, she had refrained from seeking any explanation of his conduct with regard to the King’s visits.
Franz, on his side, did not venture to broach the topic first. He perceived the shock which had been given to Dorothea’s mind, and he dared not risk making the breach wider. But his watchful eyes noted that the King’s gift had disappeared from its place, and he drew the augury that things were not going altogether favourably, and that his promotion to the post of ranger of the forest was further out of reach than it had seemed the day before.