"You met him there, eh?" I asked, eager to ascertain the truth, for that secret visit to Rome had been a most mysterious one, even to me.
"I do not think I need reply to that question," he said. "All I can say is that the Crown-Prince kept rather queer company on that occasion."
Those words only served to confirm my suspicions. Whenever "Willie" disappeared alone from Potsdam I could afterwards always trace the disappearance to his penchant for the eternal feminine. How often, indeed, had I been present at scenes between the Crown-Princess and her husband, and how often I had heard the Emperor storm at his son in that high-pitched voice so peculiar to the Hohenzollerns when unduly excited.
The subject soon dropped, but his statements filled me with apprehension. It was quite plain that this well-dressed, bald-headed Spaniard was in possession of some secret of the Crown-Prince's, a secret which had not been revealed to me.
More than once in the course of the next few days, when we were alone together, I endeavoured to learn something of the nature of the secret which took his Highness to the Eternal City, but Aranda was very clever and discreet. In addition, the attitude of the girl Lola became more than ever strange. There was a blank look in those big, beautiful eyes of hers that betrayed something abnormal. But what it was I failed to decide.
One evening after dinner I saw her walking alone in the moonlight along the terrace by the lake, and joined her. So preoccupied she seemed that she scarcely replied to my remarks. Then suddenly she halted, and as though unable to restrain her feelings longer I heard a low sob escape her.
"Mademoiselle, what is the matter?" I asked in French. "Tell me."
"Oh, nothing, Monsieur, nothing," she declared in a low, broken voice. "I—I know I am very foolish, only——"
"Only what? Tell me. That you are in distress I know. Let me assist you."
She shook her handsome head mournfully.