"As frankly as I can, but remember very little yet. Moreover, it is your frankness that is to be tested. Do you think you can trust me sufficiently to do as you said when I saw you last—tell me the whole of your wishes unreservedly?"
"Certainly I will," she replied instantly. "I have been waiting to do so ever since the day of my dear father's funeral."
"I understood that I was to await some sign from you. You said as much," I reminded her.
"True; but your message to me, that you would seek an interview as soon as practicable, has kept me waiting till now. I have been impatient; but it does not matter now," she ended, with a smile.
"Who gave you my message?" I asked. I had sent none, of course, but guessed that it was a ruse of von Nauheim's to keep us apart while he was away in Munich.
"The count himself," answered the girl in some astonishment, and with a look of quick suspicion. "Did you not send any?"
"There has been some misunderstanding," I said quietly. "But I was waiting to hear from you, and I was to the full as impatient as you could have been."
She cast her eyes down and frowned, and her little foot tapped quickly on the floor.
"It must be as you say—he misunderstood you—or else he was afraid of my speaking plainly to you while he was away." The first sentence was spoken with hesitation, the second quickly and with a touch of indignation, and directly afterward her pulse quickened and she said volubly: "Cousin Hans, I can tell you what I dared not tell my father. I am afraid of the count. You have asked me what I wish. I have two wishes—to be released from this marriage, and to stop all this hateful intrigue for the throne. I am not fit for it. I do not wish it. I am only afraid and harassed and distracted. Oh, I long with a regret I cannot put in words for the days of quiet and peace when none of this was ever thought of! Then I had not a care or grief, and now life is all fear and sorrow. I am the most miserable girl on earth."
She lifted her hands and let them fall again on her lap with a gesture eloquent of despair, and now that the momentary excitement had passed her voice grew heavy with the accents of sorrow.