The dress she wore was one she used when in the country. She had thrown a short cape of Henriette’s about her shoulders, and was thus sufficiently disguised to avoid recognition by people in the streets.
As she came around a sudden bend in the pathway to the foot of the bridge the dark figure of a man in a black overcoat emerged from the shadow, and was next instant at her side, holding his hat in his hand and bowing before her.
“I began to fear that your Imperial Highness would not come,” he said breathlessly in German. “Or that you had been prevented.”
“Is it so very late, then?” she inquired in her sweet, musical voice, as the man walked slowly at her side. “I had difficulty in getting away in secret.”
“No one has followed you, Princess?” he said, glancing anxiously behind him. “Are you quite sure?”
“No one. I was very careful. But why have you asked me to come here? Why were you at the ball last night? How did you manage to get a card?”
“I came expressly to see you, Princess,” answered the young man in a deep earnest voice. “It was difficult to get a command to the ball, but I managed it, as I could approach you by no other way. At your Highness’s own Court you, as Crown Princess, are unapproachable for a commoner like myself, and I feared to write to you, as De Trauttenberg often attends to your correspondence.”
“But you are my friend, Steinbach,” she said. “I am always to be seen by my friends.”
“At your own risk, your Highness,” he said quickly. “I know quite well that last night when you stopped and spoke to me it was a great breach of etiquette. Only it was imperative that I should see you to-night. To you, Princess, I owe everything. I do not forget your great kindness to me; how that I was a poor clerk out of work, with my dear wife ill and starving, and how, by your letter of recommendation, I was appointed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, first as French translator, and now as a secretary. Were it not for you, Princess, I and my family would have starved. You saved me from ruin, and I hope you are confident that in me, poor and humble though I am, you at least have a friend.”
“I am sure of that, Steinbach,” was her Highness’s kindly reply. “We need not cross the bridge,” she said. “It is quiet along here, by the river. We shall meet no one.”