“As you will, Princess. But——”
“Will you add to your service by escorting me out of this place?”
“I am honoured, Princess.” He stepped aside, and she moved towards the door. “May I say a word to this fellow, Highness?” he begged.
“Is it necessary?”
“Only to warn him that if he sees daylight in this place to-morrow, it will be through the bars of the town prison.”
The professor evidently thought it very probable; anyhow he did not dispute the contingency, and in a few moments his three visitors were outside in the street.
“Oh, Princess, what a horrible adventure,” cried the impressionable Minna.
“What an amazing piece of folly,” her mistress corrected with a little shudder of self-reproach. “One can scarcely blame the wretched man for trying to take advantage of it.” She turned to the young man. “Let me thank you again, sir, for having rescued us from an awkward predicament. It was a foolish whim that led us into it, but we had heard a wonderful account of the fortune-teller, and one gets tired of being always sensible.”
The explanation seemed wrung from her. The constraint of her tone from which a touch of haughtiness was not absent, showed that the speaker was not used to apologize or account for her actions. But here the intolerable humiliation of a false position made it imperative.
“A very natural curiosity, Princess,” he replied with a smile. “And the accident of the fellow’s rudeness was hardly to have been foreseen. It is very hard,” he continued with what seemed perhaps a strange temerity, “that those in exalted positions should be debarred from most of the fun and adventures of life.” Seeming to recollect himself, he added with a deferential bow, “I am truly favoured at having been permitted to free your Highness from an embarrassing situation.”