Then, for the first time, she lost her head. She had imposed a severe strain upon her excitable spoilt temper in disciplining herself for a week. The prospect of ten days more, during which she must still control herself, play the rôle of the arch indulgent friend, when she was devoured by at least four different passions, abruptly declared itself beyond her powers of endurance. The game of tennis finished, she sent her footman to Ordham with an imperious summons. He came reluctantly, for he intended to play another game at once.
“Come with me!” she exclaimed below her breath. “You must! you must! The most dreadful thing has happened, and you are my only friend. I must talk to you.”
Wondering what dreadful fate could menace any one so carefully and exquisitely arrayed, but recalling that he had practically engaged himself to stand by her for a fortnight, he sent the footman for his coat and entered the victoria. She waved her hand in the direction of the Englischergarten, and ten minutes later, leaving the carriage at the opening of a secluded path in the woods, she led Ordham along the romantic windings of the Isar. When they were out of earshot, she suddenly caught him by the shoulders and brought her morbid excited little face close to his.
“Johann! Johann!” she gasped. (She spoke English perfectly.) “Take me away! Fritz suspects—he threatened this morning to kill me. He has gone to Berlin. It is only a ruse! He will return suddenly, hoping to entrap me—”
“But he cannot.” Ordham recalled some of her recent lies, and felt the necessity of keeping his head clear. “I will even stay away from your house. Then, what danger?”
“Oh, you don’t understand! It is the knowledge of the sword that hangs over my head. If he came back suddenly and discovered nothing immediate, it would make him the more furious. He would ferret out other things.”
“I don’t think he could.” But his blood congealed, and he wondered if it were the damp woodland after his hour of tennis. That this would be an excellent excuse for illness on the morrow cheered him somewhat, and he said with his exquisite gentle courtesy:
“I am sure that you are agitating yourself for nothing. But could we not talk it over to-morrow? I feel that I am getting a chill—I have not had a shower and rub down, you know, and this enchanting nook is rather like a new-made grave. You know how easily I take cold.”
“I don’t believe you ever had a cold in your life,” she screamed. “In those flannels you look like a pink baby that hasn’t cut its teeth. You shall listen to me, and if you write me to-morrow that you are ill I’ll go to the Legation.”
“Oh, for your own sake, don’t do that.”