“This old beggar ought to know,” thought Brancepeth, occupied with his new idea and to whom Germans meant every nationality from Schleswig-Holstein to Moldavia; and he addressed the newcomer point-blank.
“Do you know a Countess Lynar, sir?”
“I know a great many Lynars,” replied the Prince. “It is a very general name. Can you add anything more definite?”
“She’s the woman whom that Jew fellow, Vanderlin, divorced,” replied Brancepeth.
The Prince smiled and coughed.
“Olga zu Lynar? I know her—yes. She is my only daughter. Vanderlin is a banker, but he is not a Jew.”
Brancepeth grew very red.
“I—I—beg you ten thousand pardons,” he muttered. “I didn’t know, you know; I am always blundering.”
“There is nothing to pardon,” said Prince Khris sweetly. “Englishmen are so insular. They never know anything about their neighbors across the water. It is perfectly well known everywhere out of England that my daughter was—separated—from Vanderlin, but that you, my Lord Brancepeth, should not know it is tout ce qu’il y a de plus naturel.”
“He takes it uncommonly coolly,” thought Brancepeth, still under the spell of his astonishment, and still distressed as an Englishman always is at having made a stupid mistake and wounded an acquaintance.