“Well, young Prince?” he said, and stared down at him….
Klaus Heinrich saluted and hurried up the red stair-carpet. He felt that the situation could only be saved by swiftness and, so to speak, by an attack by storm.
“You will be astounded, Mr. Spoelmann,” he said, “at this early hour …” He was out of breath, and the fact disturbed him greatly, he was so little used to it.
Mr. Spoelmann answered him by a look and a shrug of the shoulders, as much as to say that he could control himself, but desired an explanation.
“The fact is, we have an appointment …” said Klaus Heinrich. He was standing two steps below the millionaire and was speaking up at him. “An appointment for a ride between Miss Imma and myself…. I have promised to show the ladies the ‘Pheasantry’ and the Court Kennels…. Miss Imma told me that she knew nothing about the surrounding country. It was agreed that on the first fine day … It's such a lovely day to-day…. It is of course subject to your approval….”
Mr. Spoelmann shrugged his shoulders, and made a face as if to say: “Approval—why so?”
“My daughter is grown up,” he said. “I don't interfere. If she rides, she rides. But I don't think she has time. You must find that out for yourself. She's in there.” And Mr. Spoelmann pointed his chin towards the tapestry door, through which Klaus Heinrich had already once passed.
“Thanks,” said Klaus Heinrich. “I'll go and see for myself.” And he ran up the remaining steps, pushed the tapestry hanging aside with a determined gesture, and went down the steps into the sunlit, flower-scented winter garden.
In front of the splashing fountain and the basin with fancy-feathered ducks sat Imma Spoelmann leaning over a table, her back turned to the incomer. Her hair was down. It hung black and glossy on each side of her head, covered her shoulders, and allowed nothing to be seen but a shadow of the childlike quarter profile of her face, which showed white as ivory against the darkness of her hair. There she sat absorbed in her studies, working at the figures in the notebook before her, her lips pressed on the back of her left hand, and her right grasping the pen.
The Countess too was there, also busy writing. She sat some way off under the palms, where Klaus Heinrich had first conversed with her, and wrote sitting upright with her head on one side, a pile of closely scribbled note-paper lying at her side. The clank of Klaus Heinrich's spurs made her look up. She looked at him with half-closed eyes for two seconds, the long pen poised in her hand, then rose and curtseyed. “Imma,” she said, “his Royal Highness Prince Klaus Heinrich is here.”