“How can you tell? We haven’t seen his face,” replied the other, in the same cautious tone.
“No. But look at the back of his neck, and his ears.”
Miss Portman looked and gave a little shiver. She would never have thought of observing it, if her attention had not been called by the Princess. But it was true. The back of the man’s neck and his ears were of a ghastly, yellow white.
“Horrid!” she ejaculated. “He’s probably dying of some contagious disease. Do let’s get away from him.”
“No, no,” said Virginia. “He’s our only hope. They’re going to let him pass through. Listen.”
Miss Portman listened, but as she understood only such words of Rhaetian as she had picked up in the last few weeks, she could merely surmise that he was ordering the crowd out of his way because he had a special message from the Lord Chancellor to the Burgomaster.
The human wall opened; the man darted through, and Miss Portman was dragged after him by the Princess. So close to him had they kept, that they might easily be supposed to be under his escort; and in any case, they passed before there was time to dispute their right of way.
“It must be the secretary of Herr Koffman, the new Burgomaster,” Virginia heard one man say to another. “And those ladies are with him.”
On and on, through the crowd, passed the man in gray and crimson, oblivious of the two women who were using him. There was something about that disagreeable back of his which proclaimed him a man of but one idea at a time. Close to the front line of spectators, however, there came a check. People were vexed at the audacity of the girl and the elderly woman, and would have pushed them back, but at the critical second the blue and silver uniformed band of Rhaetia’s crack regiment, the Imperial Life Guards, struck up an air which told that the Emperor was coming. Promptly the small group concerned forgot its grievance, in excitement, crowding together so that Virginia was pressed to the front, and only Miss Portman was pushed ruthlessly into the background.
The poor lady raised a feeble protest in English, which nobody heeded, unless it were the man who had inadvertently acted as pioneer. At her shrill outburst he turned quickly, as if startled by the sudden cry, and Virginia was so close to him that her chin almost touched his shoulder. For the first time she had a glimpse of his face, which matched the yellow wax of his neck in pallor.