While she wondered, his voice broke into her questionings.
“I hope, gna’ Fräulein,” the chamois hunter was saying, almost shyly and as if by an effort, “that you won’t go away from our country thinking that we Rhaetians are so cold of heart and blood as you’ve seemed to fancy. We men of the mountains may be different from others you have seen, but we’re not more cold. The torrent of our blood may sleep for a season under ice, but when the spring comes—as it must—and the ice melts, then the torrent gushes forth the more hotly because it has not spent its strength before.”
“I shall remember your words,” said the Princess, “for—my journal of Rhaetia. And now, here’s my poor friend. I shall have to make her a thousand excuses.”
For her journal of Rhaetia! For a moment the man looked wistful, as if it were a pain to him that he would have no other place in her thoughts, nor time to win it, since there sat a lady in a tourist’s hat, and eye-glasses, and the episode was practically closed. He looked too, as if there was something he would add to his last words if he could; but Miss Portman saw the two advancing figures, and shrieked a shrill cry of thanksgiving.
“Oh, I have been so dreadfully anxious!” she groaned, “What has kept you? Have you had an accident? Thank heaven you’re here. I began to give up hope of ever seeing you again alive.”
“Perhaps you never would, if it hadn’t been for the help of this good and brave new friend of mine,” said Virginia, hurrying into explanations. “I got into dreadful difficulties up there; it was much worse than I thought, but Leopold—” (Miss Portman started, stared with her near-sighted eyes at the tall, brown man with bare knees; colored, gasped, and swallowed hard after a quick glance at her Princess.) “Leopold happened to be near, came to my help and saved me. Wasn’t it providential? Oh, I assure you, Leopold is a monarch—of chamois hunters. Give him your cloak and rücksack to carry with mine, dear Miss Manchester. He’s kind enough to say that he’ll guide us all the way down to Alleheiligen, and I’m glad to accept his service.”
Miss Portman—a devout Royalist, and firm believer in the right of kings—grew crimson, her nose especially, as it invariably did at moments of strong emotion.
The Emperor of Rhaetia, here, caught and trapped, like Pegasus bound to the plow, and forced to carry luggage as if he were a common porter—worst of all, her insignificant, twice wretched luggage!
She would have protested if she had dared; but she did not dare, and was obliged to see that imperial form—unmistakably imperial, it seemed to her, though masquerading in humble guise—loaded down with her rücksack and her large golf cape, with goloshes in the pocket.
Crushed under the magnitude of her discovery, dazzled by the surprising brilliance of the Princess’s capture, stupefied by the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and ruining her idol’s bizarre triumph, poor Miss Portman staggered as Virginia helped her to her feet.