"You will capture the Marienkastel for me?" she asked, turning to her silent lover.
Trafford looked at the girl before him long and searchingly before answering.
"The Marienkastel is the key to Weissheim," he said at length; "it is also, it appears, the key to your heart. I thought there was a nearer way,—a better way. Yes," he went on, "I will capture the Marienkastel, or do all that a man can do to capture it, and then I will claim my reward."
"You shall have it," said Bernhardt; "I swear it."
"And I promise..." breathed Gloria.
Trafford nodded to himself.
"I am content," he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE OPENING BARS
Mr. and Mrs. Saunders were having breakfast together in the pretty stone villa they had built for themselves at Weissheim, overlooking the Nonnensee. The view of the mountains beyond the lake, the exquisite expanse of snow, growing into sparkling life under the touch of the rising sun, furnished a prospect of sufficiently absorbing grandeur. But Saunders' eyes wandered only from an omelette aux fines herbes to a belated copy of the Morning Post. English newspapers had been scarce since the cutting of the railway, and the present specimen had reached its destination by a roundabout way through Vienna, and had cost exactly tenpence.