Ordham coloured haughtily. He did not like the word. “I never lie in wait for any one,” he replied coldly. “Besides, no doubt, she is stalked by a footman.”
“None of her servants speak English.”
“How is it that her German is so faultless? I am told that before any stories got about she was taken for a German as a matter of course.”
“Her parents were Hungarian. Her singing teacher in America was a Hanoverian.”
“Has she told you that much?”
“Now and again I get something out of her—but nothing that really counts. To judge from her manner, her carriage, her breeding, she might be a Karoly or a Festetics, but one day when I told her bluntly there was a rumour to the effect that her parents were emigrants,—steerage emigrants,—she replied coolly that she should be delighted if the story put an end to romantic nonsense.”
“I should like to believe that she was a runaway—or an abducted—princess.”
“So would all the other romantic babies. Unfortunately, we have her word for it that she is an American born—and reared. Of course her policy in admitting that much is to stifle curiosity in her origin—origin in America not counting with Europeans in the least—as well as to discourage curiosity. The place is so vast—ten thousand miles across, I am told—or is it in diameter?—that one might as well look for a lost soul in Hades. She has even admitted that she was on the stage in America. But under what name? That I cannot surprise out of her, and the few Americans I know never saw nor heard of her. They all live in Europe. Of course she never sang over there. She need not tell us that, for if they were still red and wore feathers, they would have made that voice famous in a day.”
“What makes you so sure that Margarethe Styr is not her name?”
“Am I a Frau Professor or an old woman of the world? When the King decided that bracelets, rings, even necklaces were inadequate acknowledgment from the first living royal patron of art to the greatest interpreter of the new music, and that she must be raised to the Bavarian aristocracy—Gott!—I was commanded to be her social sponsor. Naturally, with the utmost delicacy, I endeavoured to extract such information as would satisfy the curiosity of her future compatriots. I distilled a little and inferred more. Enfin! I am convinced that the story, whatever it may be, is hideous—but hideous! Who minds a lover or two?—and an artist, as I have said. I know women—ach Gott, ja! and I have studied the Styr far more deeply than she knows. There are certain signs—”