The trifling falsehoods were trippingly but timidly said; the Princess's blue eyes sought consciously her niece's forgiveness with a pathetic appeal, to which Wanda, who loved her tenderly, could not be long obdurate. Had it been any other than Mme. Ottilie who had thus brought by force into her presence a stranger whom she had marked her desire to avoid, the serene temper of the mistress of the Hohenszalrasburg would not have preserved its equanimity, and she would have quitted her library on the instant, sweeping a grand courtesy which should have been greeting and farewell at once to one too audacious. But the shy entreating appeal of the Princess's regard touched her heart, and the veneration she had borne from childhood to one so holy, and so sacred by years of grace, checked in her any utterance or sign of annoyance.
Sabran, meanwhile, standing by in some hesitation and embarrassment, bowed low with consummate grace, and a timidity not less graceful.
She advanced a step and held her hand out to him.
'I fear I have been inhospitable, sir,' she said to him in his own tongue. 'Are you wholly unhurt? You had a rough greeting from Hohenszalras.'
He took the tip of her fingers on his own and bent over them as humbly as over an empress's.
Well used to the world as he was, to its ceremonies, courts, and etiquettes, he was awed by her as if he were a youth; he lost his ready aptness of language, and his easy manner of adaptability.
'I am but a vagrant, Madame!' he murmured, as he bowed over her hand. 'I have no right even to your charity!'
For the moment it seemed to her as if he spoke in bitter and melancholy earnest, and she looked at him in a passing surprise that changed into a smile.
'You were a poacher certainly, but that is forgiven. My aunt has taken you under her protection; and you had the Kaiser's already: with such a dual shelter you are safe. Are you quite recovered?' she said, bending her grave glance upon him. 'I have to ask your pardon for my great negligence in not sending one of my men to guide you over the pass to Matrey.'
'Nay, if you had done so I should not have enjoyed the happiness of being your debtor,' he replied, meeting her close gaze with a certain sense of confusion most rare with him; and added a few words of eloquent gratitude, which she interrupted almost abruptly: