"First, the Emperor must know nothing, and the Crown-Princess must be kept in entire ignorance at all costs," he declared. "I can now foresee a great amount of trouble. Curse the women! I trusted one, and she—ah! I can see it all now."
"Is it very serious?" I asked, still anxious to glean the truth.
"Serious!" he cried, staring at me wildly. "Serious! Why, Heltzendorff, it means everything to me—everything!"
The Crown-Prince was not the kind of man to exhibit fear. Though degenerate in every sense of the word, and without the slightest idea of moral obligations, yet he was, nevertheless, utterly oblivious to danger of any sort, being wildly reckless, with an entire disregard of consequences. Here, however, he saw that the secret, which he had fondly believed to be his alone, was known to this mysterious Spaniard.
"I cannot understand why this girl, Lola—or whatever she calls herself—should warn me. I wonder who she is. What is she like?"
I described her as minutely as I could, more especially the unusual fairness of her hair, and the large, wide-open, blue eyes. She had a tiny mole upon her chin, a little to the left.
The description seemed to recall some memory, for suddenly he exclaimed:
"Really, the girl you describe is very like one that I met about a year ago—a thief-girl in the Montmartre, in Paris, called Lizette Sabin. I came across her one night in one of the cabarets."
As he spoke he went across to a big antique chest of drawers, one of which he unlocked with his key, and after a long search he drew out a cabinet photograph and handed it to me.
I started. It was a picture of the pretty Lola!