"Yes but Fritzi what are we to do?"
"Do, ma'am? About your royal sisters? Would to heaven I had been born a rogue!"
"Yes, but as you were not—ought I to go back and say they're only half-sisters? Or step-sisters? Or sisters in law? Wouldn't that do?"
"With whom were you speaking?"
"Mr. Morrison."
"Ma'am, let me beg you to be more prudent with that youth than with any one. Our young friend Cæsar Augustus is I believe harmlessness itself compared with him. Be on your guard, ma'am. Curb that fatal feminine appendage, your tongue. I have remarked that he watches us. But a short time since I saw him eagerly conversing with your Grand Ducal Highness's maid. For me he has already laid several traps that I have only just escaped falling into by an extraordinary presence of mind and a nimbleness in dialectic almost worthy of a born rogue."
"Oh Fritzi," said the frightened Priscilla, laying her hand on his sleeve, "do go and tell him I didn't mean what I said."
Fritzing wiped his brow again. "I fail to understand," he said, looking at Priscilla with worried eyes, "what there is about us that can possibly attract any one's attention."
"Why, there isn't anything," said Priscilla, with conviction. "We've been most careful and clever. But just now—I don't know why—I began to think aloud."
"Think aloud?" exclaimed Fritzing, horrified. "Oh ma'am let me beseech you never again to do that. Better a thousand times not to think at all. What was it that your Grand Ducal Highness thought aloud?"