“Most certainly I shall, your Highness. I can only ask pardon for speaking so openly. But it was at your request.”
“Do not let us mention it further,” she urged, her white lips again compressed. “Leave me now. It is best that I should walk down yonder to the Parkring alone.”
He halted, and bowing low, his hat in his hand, said,—
“I would ask your Imperial Highness to still consider me your humble servant to command in any way whatsoever, and to believe that I am ever ready to serve you and to repay the great debt of gratitude I owe to you.”
And, bending, he took her gloved hand and raised it to his lips in obeisance to the princess who was to be his queen.
“Adieu, Steinbach,” she said in a broken voice. “And for the service you have rendered me to-night I can only return you the thanks of an unhappy woman.”
Then she turned from him quickly, and hurried down the path to the park entrance, where shone a single gas lamp, leaving him standing alone, bowing in silence.
He watched her graceful figure out of sight, then sighed, and turned away in the opposite direction.
A few seconds later the tall, dark figure of a man emerged noiselessly from the deep shadow of the tree where, unobserved, he had crept up and stood concealed. The stranger glanced quickly up and down at the two receding figures, and then at a leisurely pace strode in the direction the Princess had taken.
When at last she had turned and was out of sight he halted, took a cigarette from a silver case, lit it after some difficulty in the tearing wind, and muttered some words which, though inaudible, were sufficiently triumphant in tone to show that he was well pleased at his ingenious piece of espionage.