"Well," replied Mr. Schmenckel, "perhaps it is not so very little I know about her. When one has had somebody thirteen years in the company----"
"But I have met the gypsy only this summer at--never mind, not very far from here, and quite alone."
"That may very well be," replied the cunning director; "it is not the first time to-night that Xenobia has run away, but she has always come back again."
"Thirteen years!" said Oswald, who did not think for a moment of doubting the fable; "how old was the child, then, when she came to join you?"
"How old?" said Mr. Schmenckel. "Why, your excellency, when she came to us, she had no child. I know that, as a matter of course, ha, ha, ha!"
"You?" said Oswald, and he shuddered. "You?"
"Well! why not? Do I look to your excellency's eye as if a pretty young woman could not possibly fall in love with me; and did not this girl, moreover, take wages from me? I can tell your excellency that I have made very different conquests in my time. Has your excellency ever been in St. Petersburg? There is the Princess--but, after all, I am not at liberty to speak as freely of such a great lady as----"
"In one word," said Oswald, scarcely able to restrain himself, "the Czika is your child?"
"I couldn't swear to that," said Mr. Schmenckel, smiling, "but I can take my oath that she might be my child, and that I have always looked upon her in that light."
"And you think the gypsy will come back again?"