“The comfort, or the absurdity, of it is that he seems to be, if possible, as indifferent to her as she to him.”
“That can be only accounted for by his never having seen her.”
“Whose fault is that? He has never even asked for her portrait. He is away, no one knows where, on a hunting expedition. To ignore, no doubt, the disagreeable fate in store for him, and to try to forget while he can that there is such an annoying thing on earth as woman in general and our Princess in particular.”
Their talk had taken them through the picture gallery and out upon the terrace, for on that warm autumn night the long windows stood open. They had gone but a few steps when a well-known voice said:
“Minna, I have been looking for you. I was stifled in these hot rooms.”
As Ludovic bowed to the Princess a casual onlooker would have said it was a first and formal introduction; and perhaps with the Chancellor’s many eyes everywhere, that was as well. A court official came sauntering along, evidently getting a little relief from the boredom of his duties. Countess Minna threw him a laughing remark to that effect. He stopped and they stood chatting within two or three paces of the Princess and von Bertheim.
“I hear, Highness,” Ludovic said presently, “that you are interested in the country I come from.”
“I cannot help being interested,” she replied. Then as the equivocal meaning of the words struck her, she added hastily, “It is not my fault if it is so.”
“I have heard a rumour, Princess,” he said quietly.
“Ah, yes; a rumour. It is only a rumour as yet.” It was impossible to gather from her tone what meaning lay behind her words. “Tell me of your country,” she went on. She was looking away over the black screen of trees at the star-lit sky, and the words seemed forced mechanically through the dreamy preoccupation that held her.