"Come in—come in straightway," she said in a loud, clear voice; "I have a word to speak with you, Sir Count—who yet deny that you are a count. And, prithee, to how many silly girls have you taught the foreign fashions of linked arms, and all that most pleasant ceremony of leave-taking in Kernsberg and Plassenburg?"
Then the Sparhawk had his long-desired view in full daylight of the woman whose lips, touched once under cloud of night, had dominated his fancy and enslaved his will during all the weary months of winter.
Also he had before him, though he knew it not, a somewhat difficult and complicated explanation.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SPARHAWK IN THE TOILS
The Princess Margaret was standing by the window as the young man entered. Her golden curls flashed in the late sunshine, which made a kind of haze of light about her head as she turned the resentful brilliance of her eyes upon Maurice von Lynar.
"Is it a safe thing, think you, Sir Count, to jest with a princess in her own land and then come back to flout her for it?"
Maurice understood her to refer to the kiss given and returned in the darkness of the night. He knew not of how many other indiscretions he was now to bear the brunt, or he had turned on the spot and fled once more across the river.
"My lady," he said, "if I offended you once, it was not done intentionally, but by mistake."