Suddenly I saw her start and glance round; and if ever a face told of fear and repulsion hers did, for all the struggle that her pride made to repress the evidence of her emotion, and to force up a smile to cover an aching heart.
Then I saw the cause of the change.
A man came into view, and my heart gave a great leap of anger that had long slumbered. I had known him in the old life for the falsest scoundrel that ever cheated a friend or ruined a woman. The mere sight of him set me on fire. He had dealt me a foul and treacherous wrong, and when I had sought him to call him to account he had fled, and I could never trace him.
I watched him now as he spoke to the girl, and my old hate awoke till I could have found it in me to rush out there and then to cast his foulness in his face and choke his life out of him. And my brow gathered in an angry scowl as I watched the girl's struggle between pride and loathing when she answered him, and shrank back from the sensual brute stare of his eyes.
As soon as I could keep my voice steady I called my companion to the window.
"Who are those?" I asked.
"The Countess Minna, the Prince's only daughter, now his only child. It is she who, under heaven, will be the Queen of——"
He checked himself when he caught my look of intense surprise.
"And the man. Who is he?"
"The Count von Nauheim, her future husband."