'Roy,' she said, 'you have given your son spirit. One sees he has your blood when you have been with him an hour.'
'The season has returned, if your Highness will let it be Spring,' said my father.
'Far fetched!—from the Lower Danube!' she ejaculated in mock scorn to excite his sprightliness, and they fell upon a duologue as good as wit for the occasion.
Prince Hermann had gone. His departure was mentioned with the ordinary commonplaces of regret. Ottilia was unembarrassed, both in speaking of him and looking at me. We had the Court physician and his wife at table, Chancellor von Redwitz and his daughter, and General Happenwyll, chief of the prince's contingent, a Prussian at heart, said to be a good officer on the strength of a military book of some sort that he had full leisure to compose. The Chancellor's daughter and Baroness Turckems enclosed me.
I was questioned by the baroness as to the cause of my father's unexpected return. 'He is generally opportune,' she remarked.
'He goes with me to England,' I said.
'Oh! he goes,' said she; and asked why we were honoured with the presence of Mr. Peterborough that evening. There had always been a smouldering hostility between her and my father.
To my surprise, the baroness spoke of Ottilia by her name.
'Ottilia must have mountain air. These late hours destroy her complexion. Active exercise by day and proper fatigue by night time— that is my prescription.'
'The princess,' I replied, envying Peterborough, who was placed on one side of her, 'will benefit, I am sure, from mountain air. Does she read excessively? The sea—'