'Which?'
My jaw fell. I stared into the darkness open-mouthed. 'Why,' I exclaimed at last, 'he is sixty--or fifty-five at least, girl!'
Marie laughed softly, with her face on my breast. 'If she loves him,' she murmured. 'If she loves him.' And she hung on me.
I sat amazed, confounded, thinking no more of Marie, though my arm was round her, than of a doll. 'But he is fifty five,' I said.
'And if you were fifty-five, do you think that I should not love you?' she whispered. 'When you are fifty-five, do you think that I shall not love you? Besides, he is strong, brave, famous--a man; and she is not a girl, but a woman. If the Count be too old, is not the Waldgrave too young?'
'Yes,' I said cunningly. 'But why either?'
'Because love is in the air,' Marie answered; and I knew that she smiled, though the gloom hid her face. 'Because there is a change in her. Because she knows things and sees things and feels things of which she was ignorant before. And because--because it is so, my lord.'
I whistled. This was beyond me. 'And yet you don't know which?' I said.
'No; I suspect.'
'Well--but the Waldgrave?' I exclaimed. 'Why, mädchen, he is one of the handsomest men I have ever seen. An Apollo! A Fairy Prince! It is not possible that she should prefer the other.'