“And—and I might have gone up to Monsieur Maurice, after all?”
My father looked at me gravely—poured out a second glass of kirsch—drew his chair to the front of the fire, and said:—
“I don't know about that, Gretchen.”
I had felt all along that there was something wrong, and now I was certain of it.
“What do you mean, father?” I said, my heart beating so that I could scarcely speak. “What is the matter?”
“May the devil make broth of my bones, if I know!” said my father, tugging savagely at his moustache.
“But there is something!”
He nodded, grimly.
“Monsieur Maurice, it seems, is not to have so much liberty,” he said, after a moment. “He is not to walk in the grounds oftener than twice a week; and then only with a soldier at his heels. And he is not to go beyond half a mile from the Château in any direction. And he is to hold no communication whatever with any person, or persons, either in-doors or out-of-doors, except such as are in direct charge of his rooms or his person. And—and heaven knows what other confounded regulations besides! I wish the Baron von Bulow had been in Spitzbergen before he put it into the King's head to send him here at all!”
“But—but he is not to be locked up?” I faltered, almost in a whisper.