She answered hastily:
"I think not. No! I am quite certain he did not."
"No?"
Straz sniffed and whipped out his handkerchief, grumbling:
"Yet the purport of my mission to that South German crow's-nest was known to him—here in Berlin—I can prove it!—by nightfall of the day I interviewed the Prince." He added, trumpeting in his handkerchief, "Of course, M. Bismarck has spies everywhere. But all the same it was quick work!"
Her face was immovable. No guilty flush stained its smooth ivory surface. Only the lines about her scarlet mouth sharpened, that was all.
Straz went on, peevishly, strolling to the fireplace, and leaning an elbow on the corner of the mantelshelf.
"I suppose they call that princely hospitality—to send a man who has traveled night and day, and is decanted out of a crazy railway-station droschke at the door of their confounded Stammschloss at five o'clock in the morning—to an inn!"
She said in a velvet tone of amorous insinuation, and with a glance of sleepy fire:
"To an inn where Love lay waiting!..."