Count von Wedell, misinterpreting his master, thought "it was to laugh," but a look upon the War Lord's face caused him to change his attitude.
"Pay No. 103 five thousand marks, half in cash, half in reserve," said Wilhelm, disregarding the one-third clause for a purpose, no doubt. "I have no further commands for him at present."
Count Wedell stepped forward from the inner room, and the portières automatically closed before No. 103 had finished his obeisance.
CHAPTER XIX
BERTHA AND FRANZ
On Forbidden Ground—A Talk on Brain-Curves—Bertha is Afraid—Shades of Krupp—"Charity Covers ——"—A Dramatic Exit
"Oh, Franz, tell me what it all means!"
If Bertha and the chief engineer had been real lovers, and had selected the moon for a place of rendezvous, they could not have been safer from intrusion than in the late Frederick Krupp's library with the door unlocked, for the "room sacred to His Majesty" was a sort of Bluebeard chamber into which no eye but the War Lord's and Bertha's must look.
Bertha had shown her mother a parcel of documents which Uncle Majesty had ordered her to read carefully. "I will go to the library, where I will be undisturbed," she said in her decisive tone, while the butler was serving early strawberries sent from Italy. Strawberries in January in a little Rhenish town! It reminds us that when Charles V., warrior and gourmet-gourmand, sucked an orange in winter-time, his Court was prostrate with astonishment and admiration.
And Alexis Orloff won Catherine the Great from his brother Gregory—temporarily, at least—by sending to the Semiramis of the North a plate of strawberries for the New Year. Yet nowadays any well-to-do person can indulge all the year round in the luxuries that made Charles and Catherine the envied of their Imperial class.