"Heaven's own sunshine!" cried the Princess. "Have the pretty young men of Plassenburg maids and tirewomen? Small wonder that so few of them ever visit us! No blame that you stay in that happy country!"
The secretary recovered his presence of mind rapidly.
"I mean," he explained, "the old woman Bette, my nurse, who, though now I am grown up, comes every night to see that I have all I want and to fold my clothes. I have no other women about me."
"You are sure that Bette, who comes for your clothes and to see that you have all you want, is old?" persisted the Princess, keeping her eyes sharply upon her companion.
"She is so old that I never remember her to have been any younger," replied the secretary, with an air of engaging candour.
"I believe you," cried the outspoken Princess; "no one can lie with such eyes. Strange that I should have liked you from the first. Stranger that in an hour I should tell you so. Your arm!"
The secretary immediately put his hand within the arm of the Princess Margaret, who turned upon him instantly in great astonishment.
"Is that also a Plassenburg custom?" she said sharply. "Was it old Bette who taught you thus to take a lady's arm? It is otherwise thought of in our ignorant Courtland!"
The young man blushed and looked down.
"I am sorry," he said; "it is a common fashion with us. I crave your pardon if in aught I have offended."