“But I wasn’t speaking of her,” he protested, softly. “She’ll miss you, I dare say; but there’s a man who’ll miss you a whole lot more—miss you as he never thought it would be possible for him to miss anyone.”
The girl’s eyes drooped under the ardour of his gaze, and her cheeks flushed pinker still at his words. Her heart fluttered with an emotion that was new to it, and that she did not quite understand. She had experienced it once or twice before, in lesser degree, on the train when this big, hearty, boyish fellow had—not altogether by chance—touched her hand. It made her mute then, and now her tongue was again for the moment tied.
“But I am not going far,” she replied, when utterance returned; “my sister’s place is only a mile or two out of town, and the man has told me that he is very fond of walking.”
“And may he come?” he pleaded, eagerly, his face suddenly alight with the smile she had grown to regard as not the least of his attractions. “May he?”
“Why not?” she asked, laughing lightly.
“Yes, why not?” he repeated, joyously. “Since he will want to see her very much, and since she has not denied him.”
Frau Fahler, Minna’s sister, was much older than she; a woman of thirty-four at least, short, stout and fair-haired, but with eyes of that deep pansy blue which was a family characteristic. She arrived about eleven o’clock in a rather quaint-looking country wagon, and she carried off the Fräulein almost immediately, in spite of the urging of Hope and O’Hara that she would stop for luncheon and delay the parting until afternoon.
Minna was naturally loth to leave until some tidings had been received from the Palace, but her sister had a dozen reasons for her haste, and so it was arranged that when towards evening her luggage was sent for, the messenger should be given whatever news had arrived.
Hope’s anxiety meanwhile had grown with every passing minute. O’Hara’s assurances were well intentioned, but, backed only by surmise, they were by no means satisfying.
“I don’t suppose he can come himself, or he would be here,” she said, in reply to his oft-repeated explanation that a Crown Prince is not wholly his own master, “but he certainly could send Johann or some one with a note.”