“Who is the girl in question?”
“Ah, that I cannot tell you. Personally, I do not know Lady Bridgminster; but a friend of hers writes me these things. I am assured, however, that the girl is all that we could wish. Of course he will not love her, but what of that? He will always be polite to her, and that is much! much!”
“Why do you think he will not love her?”
“Why—why—” Excellenz was quite positive that he would be quite as enamoured as any other young husband, during the honeymoon. “Oh, these young men brought up by married women—they always love women older than themselves. No doubt it will be you, ma belle Marguerite. That will do him no harm—but make him marry the girl.”
“He will not fall in love with me. I shall see to it that no such idea enters his head. As he will have to be engineered into love as into everything else, he is quite safe not to discover my fascinations unaided.”
“Ah, dear Gräfin, you Americans are so clever! Between us all, I feel confident that our dear young friend will have one of the most brilliant careers in Europe. Is it not so?”
“I do not worry in the least,” Styr had responded dryly.
Two days later Princess Nachmeister, satisfied, went off to drink the waters at her favourite spa; but promptly upon the first day of every week she received a letter from a member of the bureau of secret police.
XXIII
ONE OF THE POTTERIES
The greater part of Ordham’s reserve melted, as was natural, when he sprawled on the divan with his coat off on a hot day, and his hostess sat in her rocking-chair fanning herself and wearing one of those white lawn wrappers that an American woman would retain in her wardrobe were she elevated to a throne. By no means frank by temperament, he indulged in frankness as a sort of luxury where his confidence had been won; and feeling more intimate with Styr than he had ever felt with anybody, he talked to her freely about himself, his family, his hopes, desires, and sentiments toward most things, until Margarethe knew him far better than either of them realized at the time.