"Why am I spoken of," she cried passionately, "as though I were a baby, a thing of no account, to be carried away to your mistress or disposed of according to your liking? Do you think that I would come, Baron von Leibingen——"
She broke off suddenly. She leaned a little further forward. Her lips were parted. The fire in her eyes had given way to a great wonder, and the breathlessness of her silence was like a thing to be felt. It held us all dumb. We waited—we scarcely knew for what. Only we knew that she had something more to say, and we were impelled to wait for her words.
"I have seen you before," she cried, with a strange note of wonder in her tone. "Your face comes back to me—only it was a long time ago—a long, long time! Where was it, Baron von Leibingen?"
I heard his smothered exclamation. He drew quickly a step backwards as though he sought to evade her searching gaze.
"You are mistaken, young lady," he said. "I know nothing of you beyond the fact that the lady whom I have the honour to serve desires to be your friend."
"It is not true," she answered. "I remember you—a long way back—and the memory comes to me like an evil thought. I will not come to you. You may kill me, but I will not come alive."
"Indeed you are mistaken," he persisted, though he sought still the shadow of a rhododendron bush, and his voice quivered with nervous anxiety. "You have never seen me before. Surely the Archduchess, the daughter of a King, is not one whose proffered kindness it is well to slight? Think again, young lady. Her Highness will make your future her special charge!"
"If your visit to-night, sir," she answered, "is a mark of the Archduchess's good-will to me, I can well dispense with it. I have given you my answer."
"You will remember, Baron," I said, speaking at random, but gravely, and as though some special meaning lurked in my words, "that this young lady comes of a race who do not readily change. She has made her choice, and her answer to you is my answer. She will remain with us!"
The Baron stepped out again into the rich-scented twilight.