"Oh, Beverly, dear, I hate to hear of your going," cried the princess. "When did you tell him you'd start?"
"Why, oh,—er—let me see; when did I say? Dash me—as Mr. Anguish would say—I don't believe I gave a date. It seems to me I said soon, that's all."
"You don't know how relieved I am," exclaimed Yetive rapturously? and Beverly was in high dudgeon because of the implied reflection, "I believe you are in a tiff with Baldos," went on Yetive airily.
"Goodness! How foolish you can be at times, Yetive," was what Beverly gave back to her highness, the Princess of Graustark.
Late in the evening couriers came in from the Dawsbergen frontier with reports which created considerable excitement in castle and army circles. Prince Gabriel himself had been seen in the northern part of his domain, accompanied by a large detachment of picked soldiers. Lorry set out that very night for the frontier, happy in the belief that something worth while was about to occur. General Marlanx issued orders for the Edelweiss army corps to mass beyond the southern gates of the city the next morning. Commands were also sent to the outlying garrisons. There was to be a general movement of troops before the end of the week. Graustark was not to be caught napping.
Long after the departure of Lorry and Anguish, the princess sat on the balcony with Beverly and the Countess Dagmar. They did not talk much. The mission of these venturesome young American husbands was full of danger. Something in the air had told their wives that the first blows of war were to be struck before they looked again upon the men they loved.
"I think we have been betrayed by someone," said Dagmar, after an almost interminable silence. Her companion did not reply. "The couriers say that Gabriel knows where we are weakest at the front and that he knows our every movement. Yetive, there is a spy here, after all."
"And that spy has access to the very heart of our deliberations," added Beverly pointedly. "I say this in behalf of the man whom you evidently suspect, countess. He could not know these things."
"I do not say that he does know, Miss Calhoun, but it is not beyond reason that he may be the go-between, the means of transferring information from the main traitor to the messengers who await outside our walls."
"Oh, I don't believe it!" cried Beverly hotly.