“I had the honour to be present at the Hof-Ball last week.”
“Ah, I wondered——”
He understood that she was thinking of his recognition of her at the fortune-teller’s. His next words seemed surprisingly bold.
“Your Highness often plays here? Is it too much to ask to be allowed to officiate as organ-blower again?”
A little hardening of the Princess’s face told him that his temerity was resented. She gave him no answer. “Minna!” she called, “Come, dear; it is late.”
But before Minna could reach them he had spoken again.
“Pardon, Highness,” he said with great restraint yet urgently. “You have not forbidden me.”
But she spoke no word to him again. “Come, dear,” she said, linking her arm in Minna’s, and so they went across the chancel to the royal entrance leading by a covered way to the palace. He stood looking after them hoping for what he knew was beyond hope. Minna opened the door and the Princess passed out of sight without a backward look. Minna glanced round with an inscrutable laugh.
CHAPTER V
RUPERTA AND LUDOVIC
SHE had not forbidden him. Even when reminded of it the suggestion had not provoked a word of refusal. And yet she had gone without a sign of leave-taking, but with all the air of being offended. What was he to think? Turn it over as his mind would, it always came back to the one conclusion that he would go to the chapel again. “We are not allowed the feelings of ordinary people,” the Princess had said. Did not that account for the way she had recollected herself, or at least her station, and left him without another word? But she had talked with him for some time before that bold speech of his—lucky or unlucky, he would not own it either—she had assuredly shown no offence at finding him there in the chapel, at his presumption in assisting at her playing. Was that because he had done her a service at the fortune-teller’s? It was not a palatable suggestion, still less was it pleasant to think that his forwardness might be construed into a presuming upon that service. At any rate he would put it to the touch.