“I should be only too glad, Miss Van Tuyl,” O’Hara replied, “if I thought anything was to be gained by it; but the truth of the matter is, you are unnecessarily alarmed. Carey is all right. Don’t you pay any attention to these cock-and-bull stories. He has done this thing with his eyes open, and if we go interfering we may upset all his plans. We shall hear from him some time during the day, I feel certain. But if we don’t I’ll see that you have the facts before you sleep tonight. By the way, have you heard from your father?”
“Oh, yes. I had a telegram late last night. He is on his way. He will be here this evening.”
“Good. Two heads are better than one, and when he arrives we’ll find out what we want to know if we have to blow up the palace to do it. But I really feel that we shall have tidings from His Royal Highness before many hours.” And he laughed in his characteristic rollicking fashion.
“It all seems just like a dream to me,” said Minna, soberly. “I’m completely dazed. So much has happened in the last week that I hardly know what I’m doing. And now I shouldn’t stop here another minute, for I’m sure my sister will be at the hotel and those stupid people will not know where to tell her to find me.”
“We’ll all go over and sit on the terrace,” suggested O’Hara. “The band will be playing before long, and they tell me it is a very good one.”
On the journey from Paris the Irishman and the Fräulein had been much in each other’s company, and the growth of their mutual interest had been more than once remarked by both Grey and Miss Van Tuyl. Now, as he gazed at her fresh young beauty, there was a tenderness in his eyes, the meaning of which there was no mistaking. Hope saw it, and when the terrace was reached she excused herself and went inside, leaving them together.
“You will be going to your sister’s today, then, I suppose,” said the soldier, when they had found places under the shade of an awning not too close to the band stand and well away from the other loungers; in his tone was regret.
“Yes,” Minna answered, and her accent, too, was regretful. “Her house is to be my home after this, you know.”
“And there’ll be somebody that will miss you very much,” O’Hara ventured. His eyes had grown worshipful, and the girl’s colour deepened as she looked into them.
“And I shall miss somebody very much,” she returned, with a tincture of coquetry; adding, after a briefest moment, “Miss Van Tuyl is lovely. I feel as if I had known her always.”