"I hope it will be," I declared earnestly.
"Nay, I am sure it all will," she declared, as if in rebuke of my doubt. "Isn't this a lovely old garden?" she cried. "Not so good as Gramberg, of course, because no place could be so dear to me as that. But yet lovely. And what flowers! Did you ever see such magnificence? And the perfumes! They seem to distil the very essence of peace. And what a change from yesterday. It was a prison then—to-day a veritable palace of delight. Heigho! And you have changed it for me! And now for this news. You know where you left off? I do. I think I could repeat every word you said. You are going to tell me who you were before you became Heinrich Fischer, the actor at Frankfort."
"I was a nameless wanderer, and went there almost direct from my death and burial."
She stood still in the path and looked at me in blank surprise; her face wrinkled in perplexity that was only half earnest; and, despite the serious nature of things, her mood partially infected me.
"Your death?" she said in wonderment.
"It is all true. Did you ever hear your brother speak of a young Count von Rudloff, in the navy, who was at one time a friend of the Royal Family, and whose death at Berlin about five years ago aroused some comment? It happened almost immediately after the Prince, now his Majesty the Emperor, had met with an accident on board the Imperial yacht."
"The Count von Rudloff?" she repeated thoughtfully, saying the name over once or twice as though some old memories were partly stirred by it. "I think I did—but what is that to us?"
"To me much—everything, indeed. I am the Count von Rudloff," and then I told her unreservedly the whole of my strange story.
Her first comment surprised me.
"Is this the story you thought would part us?" she asked.