"I care nothing. The carriage will come for me and can go away again. I value my life. Holy Virgin, how slow the cab goes. We shall miss the train; I know we shall. And then?" her fear passed beyond words, and the sentence remained unfinished. "If he finds and kills me, my death will be at your door. You have brought him here."
"Why are you so afraid of him? He may be only coming to make peace with you and come to an understanding."
"Peace? The peace a tiger makes with a lamb. I know him."
She did not quite fit my idea of a lamb—except in her terror, perhaps; and about that there could be no mistake.
"Shall you come back to Pesth?" I asked.
"Am I insane, do you mean, when he knows the very name I have here?
"What about the servants, then? Paying them, I mean?"
"Let them go to Count Gustav. Thank heaven, here is the station," she cried, and the instant the vehicle stopped she got out and asked excitedly for the mail to Berlin.
There were some five minutes to spare, but she had bundled Ernestine into the carriage and was following when I stopped her.
"One question, Henriette? How is it that as I was out of the way the ceremony fixed for to-night did not take place earlier in the day?