time they should return home. The order to
the groom was given at once, and a minute later the prince was bowing
low to the fair woman and her husband, whom he had accompanied to the
carriage. He stood a full minute looking after them when the carriage
rolled away.

Hartmut stood at the window of the little public room looking at the
trio in the carriage, also.

On his face lay the same deadly pallor as when the name of Wallmoden was
mentioned two days before, but to-day it was the pallor of a wild,
intense anger. He had steeled himself against question or reproof; these
he would have met with supercilious arrogance, but the contemptuous
manner in which he had been set aside struck him to his heart's core.
Wallmoden's words to his sister, "We do not know him. Must I repeat that
again?" incited his whole being to revolt. He felt keenly the sentence
which lay in them. And Aunt Regine, too, the woman who had once shown an
almost motherly affection for him, she turned her back on him as if
ashamed of her first impulse to speak to him. That was too much!

"Oh, here you are at last," sounded Egon's voice from the door. "You
disappeared most mysteriously. Well, did you find your pocket-book?"

Hartmut turned toward his friend; he felt he must be on his guard.

"Yes," he said absently. "I found it on the stair, as I expected."

"You might as well have let the watchman get it for you. But why didn't
you come back? 'Twas very shabby of you to desert Frau von Wallmoden and
me. You have not, I fear, won the lovely lady's favor. You were most
ungracious."

"I shall have to endure my misfortune as best I can," said Hartmut with
a shrug.

The young prince came nearer, and laid his hand affectionately on his
shoulder.

"Or perhaps you incurred her displeasure day before yesterday? It is not
your wont to go off on a tangent when you are conversing with a charming
woman. O, I know all about it; the baroness thought fit to reprove you
for your attack on Germany, and you resented it. Now, a man should agree
to everything which comes from such lips."

"You seem to be quite excited," sneered Hartmut. "Better look to it that
the gray-haired husband does not grow jealous, in spite of his years."

"Yes, they're a singular couple," said Egon, half aloud, as if lost in
thought. "This old diplomat, with his gray hair and his keen, immobile
face, and the young wife with her dazzling beauty like a--like a--"

"Northern light, above a