Dick gazed after him in amazement. What meant this coldness, this evidence of being ill at ease? Such a reception from Gerard cut Dick to the heart, made a tear start in his eye, and gave him an undefined foreboding.
While he stood thus, there was near him a movement to either side, and a general bowing. He became aware of the Landgrave's approach, just in time to step back from his highness's way. But the Landgrave turned and greeted him with a kindly smile.
"Back from Düsseldorf so soon?" said Frederick II., in his rich and deep, but heavy and guttural, voice.
"The feet move swiftly when they return to where the heart is," said Dick.
The Landgrave, taking this as an expression of attachment to the sovereign presence, smiled paternally; then said:
"I shall send to hear your report to-morrow. The King of Bavaria has fine pictures. He used to be as famous for the fine women he kept, also."
"So I have heard, your highness," replied Dick, with a side glance towards the Landgravine at the farther end of the room, to see if Catherine might be among her highness's ladies.
The Landgrave, again misinterpreting, followed Dick's glance. "Ah," said he, in a low tone, audible to none of those who stood back from him and Dick at respectful distance, "you are thinking that the court of Cassel also is not without its fair ones. And you are right, my clear-eyed Englishman. Like the rest of your race, you will doubtless some day write your recollections of the court of Cassel. Like the rest, you will give a page to the mistresses of the sovereign. Well, tell me if you think any of the ladies that even Louis XIV. delighted to honor, was fit to buckle the shoes of her whom you see standing beneath the picture of Diana yonder."
"Whom do you mean, your highness?"
The Landgrave was too absorbed in his subject to heed the note of wild alarm in Dick's swift question.