"No, he wasn't old. This was a young man, Baroness. He had—now let me see—his hair was sort of red—I remember noticing his hair; and he wore knee-pants and a soft hat with a feather in it and was very high coloured."
"Bon Dieu!" Madame von Marwitz gasped. She had again, while Mrs. Slifer spoke, seized her by the arm as though afraid that she might escape her and she now gazed with a fixed gaze above Mrs. Slifer's head and through the absorbed Maude and Beatrice. "Red hair?—A large young man?—Was he clean shaven? Did he wear eyeglasses? Had he the face of a musician? Did he look like an Englishman—an English gentleman?"
Mrs. Slifer, nodding earnest assent to the first questions, shook her head at the latter. "No, he didn't. What I said to Maude and Beatrice was that Mr. Jardine looked more German than English. He looked just like a German student, Baroness."
"Franz Lippheim!" cried Madame von Marwitz. She sank back upon the seat from which she had risen, putting a hand before her eyes.
Victor, at her knees, laid a paw upon her lap and whined an interrogative sympathy. The three American ladies gathered near and gazed in silence upon the great woman, and Beatrice, carefully adjusting her camera, again took a snap. The picture of Madame von Marwitz, with her hand before her eyes, her anxious dog at her knees, found its way into the American press and illustrated touchingly the story of the lost adopted child. Madame von Marwitz was not sorry when, among a batch of press-cuttings, she came across the photograph and saw that her most genuine emotion had been thus made public.
She looked up at last, and the dizziness of untried and perilous freedom was in her eyes; but curious, now, of other objects, they took in, weighed and measured the little group before her; power grew in them, an upwelling of force and strategy.
She smiled upon the Slifers and she rose.
"You have done me an immeasurable service," she said, and as she spoke she took Mrs. Slifer's hand with a noble dignity. "You have lifted me from despair. It is blessed news that you bring. My child is safe with a good, a talented man; one for whom I have the deepest affection. And in the New Forest—at Brockenhurst—on Saturday. Ah, I shall soon have her in my arms."
Still holding Mrs. Slifer's hand she led them up the terraces and towards the house. "The poor child is ill, distraught. She had parted from her husband—fled from him. Ah, it has been a miserable affair, that marriage. But now, all will be well. Bon Dieu! what joy! What peace of heart you have brought me! I shall be with her to-morrow. I start at once. And you, my good friends, let me hear your plans. Let me be of service to you. Come with me for the last stage of your journey. I will not part with you willingly."
"It's all simply too wonderful, Baroness," Mrs. Slifer gasped, as she skipped along on her short legs beside the goddess-like stride of the great woman, who held her—who held her very tightly. "We were just going to drift along up to Tintagel and then work up to London, taking in all the cathedrals we could on our way."